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THE LIFE OF LIVES 









































































































































































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23 V LI 


H3L.I HUT 























































THE LIFE OF LIVES 

FURTHER STUDIES IN 
THE LIFE OF CHRIST 

tr 

> J / '' DV 

BY 

F. W.'FARRAR, D.D., F.R.S. 

DEAN OF CANTERBURY AND DEPUTY 
CLERK OF THE CLOSET TO THE QUEEN 

1 - , v . • 


“0 seterna Veritas, et vera Caritas, et cara iEternitas, tu cs Deus meus.” — S t. Aug. 

“Yea through life, death, through sorrow, and through sinning, 

Christ shall suffice me, for He hath sufficed; 

Christ is the end, for Christ was the beginning, 

Christ the beginning, for the end is Christ.” — F. W. H. Myers. 

“The longer I live the more I feel that Christianity does not consist in any particu- 
lar system of Church Government, or in any credal statement, but that Christianity 
is Christ.” — Rt. Hon, W. E. Gladstone. 


NEW YORK 

DODD, MEAD & COMPANY 

i 900 

V - 


TWO COPIES RECEIVED, 

Library of Cdngret* 

0 f fl C 6 of t h • 

MAV g „ jmo 


Keglstor of Copyrights 



.61418 

Copyright IQOO by 
Dodd, Mead & CompanYi 




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I 



CONJUGI 

DILECTISSIMJE ET FIDELISSUVLE, 
LABORUM, FELICITATIS, DOLORUM, 
PER XL ANNOS PARTICIPI, 
HUNC LIBRUM 
D. D. D. 

FREDERICUS GULIELMUS FARRAR 


III Non . Apr. MDCCCC. 


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PREFACE. 


Twenty-SIX years ago* I was led by “God’s unseen 
Providence, which men nickname ‘ Chance,’ ” to write and 
publish a “ Life of Christ.” It was based on long study, 
primarily of the Four Gospels and the Old and New Testa- 
ments, and, next, of all the sources of knowledge open to 
me, from the most ancient to the most modern. Manifold 
as were the imperfections of my work — of which no one is 
more conscious than I am myself — the book was found 
useful, and has not only been read in all parts of the Eng- 
lish-speaking world, but has also been translated into many 
languages — even into Japanese. It has been most widely 
disseminated in two translations throughout the whole of 
the Russian Empire, and has brought me many expres- 
sions of gratitude alike from English-speaking readers and 
from foreigners of every rank. I desire to record my 
humble thankfulness to God for permitting me to render 
this service — however small — to what I believe from my 
heart to be the cause of Righteousness and Truth. 

Since my “ Life of Christ ” was published, much criti- 
cism, alike favourable and adverse, has been written upon it. 
But with perfect readiness to modify any statement which 
can be disproved, and to alter any error which can be 
demonstrated, I have seen no reason to correct a single 
conclusion of the smallest vital importance. It is there- 
fore needless for me, and it would be superfluous, to 
attempt to re-narrate the external incidents in the mortal 
days of the Saviour of Mankind. In some pages, however, 
the subject has obliged me to revert to considerations on 
which I have already dwelt. 

vii 


.H 3 AWH 


naoj.nu a'boD ** vd bsl ?sw I o§£ XI8-YTXM//T 

bnii ;>inw oi M \0DfiGri3 f 3fm;n>hin ru>m riobfw t 9onobivoyi 
,vbrba ^riol no b^- acf ?.£w ll ".iahriO Jo oiLI ** s rfaildi/q 
■•■■yA bnn blO .vdl bns efoqaoO mo'd *jd) io $m;mhq 
oJ naqo vgb^Iv/ond io botiuo* orb \U, to t 1xon ,b rtn ,?Jnvrri 
bfoihnsM .rnobom iaom orb oi Jnoionc J?om ad) mot} r 3m 
yi *>rip on rloirfw io -show vat >/ anobD^b jqmi orb v^v/ aj, 
bnvoi tr , w dood e>rb -iba^rrr nn> I n£.rb auobanoD :nom 
d‘l orb io gircq Ujb ni bi>9i ri3od vino ion sad bm ; Jnioau 
ynstn oJnl boifstenini nasd oalfi ersd ind .bhow gnbfii&qa-rfail 
\bbiw jaom 1 rood ?.BfI il .oaon^cjrj- . ,Jni nr/3 — 
io oloriw orb iworf^uoi/b gnobrdanjni > vi rti boiBnimagaib 
i^3 vriBfft om irf^iroicf . [ bri£ f obqrnd mboofl :.»rfi 
b ; -•. . •• >oi qn:>[f,.jqe-ri;d';.nj] irvii jdihs sbr; ib^ng i^ hoob 

vcn noooi- > >i oiiaob I .dn.i.i x ** dvj io aioo i .• t rob 
'Tobrt r! pi om gnbtifxmq to! b D oi eaooluliffifiiii sidfrinri 
vni oio-il 3Voibd I SkAw oi— Ilsm? ipvvworl -o;} 

.riiur L bfifi ggonauovJrbjiH io oaurso .-> b >d J o r, 
-iJho doutn J^rbilduq «bv/ " IzhdO io oiiJ '* <u\ . - 

Ji i qn noiihv/ flood and f paio /bnJbnB old&ir.ovGi ,>[}[, -.b 

rl Mffw inomolnia vm; qdiborn oJ r ^nibo /t Joohdq Ain: J/jH 
od n&o (hiriv folio qnr; ryJlr, oi bru; .bsvoiqzib ad nro 
oi'Vif? jj Iootiod Oi n< ;-r t * v*t on nosa >v;;rl I .boiirr jgj<. mh^j.» 

); b n .» ) . ) [J , ! if )( . • fl i •:.!:•• b:rr?-'’ " • 1 / ) IlOi.-.f ;•;(?/>:; 

oJ f njofrd jvqua od bfuov ii ban <orn ioi aaoibbort •.••■>•■ 
1j>? : -u od] ni p.inobbfii b.n -o/, /b :>jBrn>noi c>j Ujurjtjj, 
fipvowo A t&sgfiq onjoe ni .biiqifiJBM lo tuoivB^ *nl i 
no - * r hi-’O0 oi Jiov:>*t oJ r*r ; ifdo ar fl r -idu; vb 

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* *vxi «&** .^iJpnod }j {jjsoi Qxbfrlfc do, JahrfD ni sqod jd* 
Avvu^'-'vYrt wtiV, \s ;*>$\sO WU( ^wwftQT 
.noirtteq oldrnud adi dfiw dJiol bnsa 1 Qg bn A 
od // oH j£di M t bn«d sriidooogod bm; bead tfnocf dliw “ 
<uit ggqld Hiw aJioTb mmol ym zz r M oJ bsnpbb 
boog bn£ ,rnabsrd>I ?iH lawrunaiiiiiul ^di oi .osIjs 


.daiudD bH 


ban ; ‘ hx»od Iq non? sfdrqurf bfiB ^lod t; ol smso »H 
rnil i 1 eg nud bluow^bun ,rniH ni voif >d od u ••->. •..,' • 


Ui /f .moid // lot brtr> osbslwond loi-ylno mifl oJ has 
d qj qnidi flr,rm ^rov c ei i'nmoT 11 :.iu£ c [ jP. djiw nva 
.iKf qqr. on. ob Y'rfX '* tend g’nnrn '(d fog'but 

.(Jt v Hfid?. " viitaift u bis ’S\V* ogodw mill \o b.di ov£g 




’ 













PREFACE. 


viii 

The object of the present book is different. It deals 
with questions of high importance, which the Gospels 
suggest, and aims at deepening the faith and brightening 
the hope in Christ of all who read it honestly. “Sis sus, sis 
Divus , sum Caltha, et non tibi spiroS 

And so I send it forth with the humble petition, offered 
“ with bent head and beseeching hand,” that He who 
deigned to bless my former efforts will bless this effort 
also, to the furtherance of His Kingdom, and the good of 
His Church. 

He came to “holy and humble men of heart”; and 
those who believe in Him, and would fain go to Him 
— and to Him only — for knowledge and for wisdom, will 
say with St. Paul: “To me it is a very small thing to be 
judged by man’s brief day.”* They desire no approval,, 
save that of Him whose “lie ” and “ Venite" shall settle 
all questions and controversies for ever. • 

* i Cor. iv. 3. ’E/zoi 6k elf eMxiot6v eotiv Iva vfi v/utiv avanpiQu fj vtto avQpu- 
‘irivrj f rjpkpag. 


THE LIFE OF LIVES. 


CHAPTER 1. 

THE DIVINE BIRTH. 

“ Who . . . emptied Himself, taking the form of a slave, being made 
in the likeness of man.” — Phil. ii. 7. 

“ The unfathomable depths of the divine counsels were moved ; the 
fountains of the great deep were broken up ; the healing of the nations 
was issuing forth ; but nothing was seen on the surface of human 
society but this slight rippling of the water.” — Isaac Williams, The 
Nativity. 

To the vast majority of true Christians the unalterable 
belief that Jesus Christ was the Son of God, the Saviour of 
the World, comes from the witness of the Spirit in their 
hearts. It is not mainly derived from any one process of 
argument, or even from the convergence of many different 
lines of demonstration. Confluent streams of probability 
may have helped to swell the current of their conviction, 
but the main reason why their faith remains unshaken by 
any doubt is because they know Christ and are known of 
Him. The light which lighteth every man that is born 
into the world came from Him, and was concentrated upon 
Him in the fulness of its illuminating splendour. There 
are many whose whole life is lived by faith in the Son of 
God. They would say with St. Paul : “ With me to live is 
Christ.” We may indeed lose this blessed certainty — 

“ For when we in our viciousness grow hard, 

O misery on’t, the wise gods seal our eyes, 

In our own filth drop our clear judgments, make us 
Adore our errors, laugh at us while we strut 
To our confusion.” 


2 


THE LIFE OF LIVES. 


But “ Belief lives in us through Conduct,” * and while an 
immoral Deism produces men like Aretino and Marat, the 
faith in Christ has produced thousands of such saints as 
Francis of Assisi and Vincent de Paul. To all whose daily 
experience is that Christ is with them, and within them, 
belief has become part of their inmost being. With a 
power which transcends all earthly knowledge, the Spirit 
beareth witness with their spirits that they are “ sons of 
God,” because they have been admitted into the Brother- 
hood of Him who was the Son of God. To them He is not 
only “ Verax " and “ Verus ,” but “ ipsa Veritas .” 

To those who abound in this beautitude of certainty — 
and they are, thank God, “ a great multitude whom no man 
can number” — argument has become needless. We may 
modify the words of the Poet and say that — 

“ In such high hours 
Of inspiration from the living God, 

Thought is not, in devotion it expires.'* 

But there are millions who have never attained to this 
experience. To us it seems as though man lived in the 
very midst of miracles — miracles stupendous, innumerable, 
incessant. To us “ the starry heavens above,” and still 
more “ the moral law within,” are a perpetual miracle ; nor 
would the supernaturalness of those miracles be to us 
diminished, even though every phenomenon of the material, 
moral, and spiritual Universe could be directly explained 
by what are called “natural” laws. To us the outer 
Universe is but an atom in God’s infinitude, or, as the 
Rabbis expressed it, “God (who in Talmudic literature is 
often called Maqom or ‘Space’) is not the Universe (Ha- 
Maqom), but all the Universe is in God.” f To us the 
natural is itself a supernatural phenomenon. Nature is but 
a name to express the laws which God has impressed upon 
His Universe. 

* Schleiermacher. 

f See Hershon, Genesis acc. to the Talmud , p. 170. 


THE DIVINE BIRTH. 


3 


Those who hold these views — those who think not only 
that God is but that He “ worketh hitherto ” ; those who 
believe in God’s perpetual Providence, and do not reduce 
Him to the Blind Fate of the Stoics, or the Supernal 
Indifference of the Epicureans; those who accept the 
words of Scripture that “ He careth for us,” and “ is about 
our path, and about our bed, and spieth out all our 
ways” — constitute the immense majority of mankind, to 
whatever religion they may belong. We do not observe 
that such are, in any respect, less wise, less learned, or less 
intellectually clear-sighted, nor have they rendered fewer 
services to mankind, than the minority who take upon 
them to set aside such views as childish and obsolete 
superstitions. In this majority are numbered all the most 
supremely great of those who, compared with their 
brethren, have been “ among the molehills as mountains, 
and among the thistles as forest trees.” In all the histories 
of the nations you can scarcely find one man of epoch- 
making eminence who has not believed in the God who is 
not far from every one of us, since in Him we live, and 
move, and have our being. Are we not, then, entitled to 
say with confidence, as all the best, greatest, and wisest of 
men have believed, that God has not resigned His care for 
the creatures of His hand to the exclusive working of what 
are called “ natural laws”? Securus judicat orbis terrarum. 

Again, may we not urge a second argument upon those 
who, because of the supposed invariableness of natural 
laws, cannot conceive that God ever works, or has worked, 
in the affairs of man except in exact accordance with the 
observed order? May we not ask them to consider that 
miracles themselves are nothing but an outcome of that 
Natural Law which, after all, is but a partial synonym for 
the will of God? If it be perfectly within the power of 
man to make a machine which should, in unvarying 
sequence, push out, one by one, every number, from a unit 
to (say) ten millions, and then — simply by the pre-arranged 


4 


THE LIFE OF LIVES. 


construction of the machine itself — should skip a number, 
and go from ten million to ten million and two , how absurd 
is it to suppose that even the apparent violation, or super- 
session, of laws may not be due to the very laws them- 
selves — just, for instance, as a balloon, very heavy and 
laden with human beings, mounts upwards by the very law 
of gravitation which seems to draw all objects downwards^ 
To start, as sceptics haye often done, with the dogma 
that “ Miracles do not ” — or even that “ miracles cannot — 
happen” is surely short-sighted and unphilosophical ; to 
say nothing of the fact that such an axiom sets aside 
masses of evidence — accumulated in age after age and still 
accumulating — that miracles (i. e ., events which apparently 
supersede or transcend the every-day order) have happened, 
and do happen continually. “ Nature ” is but a name for 
God’s normal and continuous government; and “ chance 
is but a nickname for His unseen Providence. “ What is 
disturbed by a miracle,” said Professor Mozley, “is the 
mechanical expectation of a recurrence.”* “Law I know; 
but what is this necessity but an empty shadow of my own 
mind’s throwing ? ” f 

Why, then, should the supernatural birth of the Saviour 
of the World appear to sceptics to be a difficulty so stupen- 
dous, and so insuperable, that it is only fit to be contemptu- 
ously set aside?;): Is it wise to feel such confidence in 
arguments which, after all, convince very few, and which 
have not shaken the belief of men whose transcendent 
intellectual powers could be questioned by none? Are 
myriads of the most brilliant men of action and men of 
genius whom the world has ever seen, such utter fools that 
a sceptic, because of his own peculiar idiosyncrasy, may 


* Mozley, Bampton Lects., p. 56. f Huxley, Lay Sermons , p. 158. 

\ It should be observed that, as Weber points out, the story of a Virgin-birth 
was not likely to have been invented by Jewish Christians, for it formed no 
part of the current Messianic expectation {Die Lehren des Talmuds , 339- 
342) ; and, even among the Jews, Is. vii. 14, was not understood in this sense. 


THE DIVINE BIRTH. 


5 


sweep away, as though it were a mere contemptible nullity, 
the initial fact in the faith of Christians? If the Virgin- 
birth of the Saviour of Mankind had stood alone — if noth- 
ing had led up to it ; if nothing had sprung from it ; if the 
witnesses to it were untrustworthy liars, who were morally 
capable of having palmed off upon the world a conscious 
fiction — then doubt would have been natural. But when 
the event stands, as it does, — quite apart from religion, — as 
the central point of the destinies of mankind ; when we see 
that all the history of the past led up to it, and that all the 
illimitable future was, and must still be, dominated by it ; 
when we see how it fulfilled the prophecies and yearnings 
of Humanity among the heathen as well as among the 
Jewish race, and how it has been the germ of all that was 
best and greatest in the progress of the ages which have 
followed — the fact ceases to stand alone. Had “ the man 
Christ Jesus” been but one of the millions — if He had been 
merely distinguished above His fellows by ordinary human 
greatness — doubt might have been excusable. But when 
we see in that Babe lying in the cradle One of whom all the 
Prophets had spoken, and One to whom ever since that 
Nativity — amid the intensification of all Light, and all 
Knowledge, and amid the undreamed-of splendour of 
immeasurable Progress — alike the humblest and the 
greatest of human intellects have looked; — when we see 
that (to use the words of the German historian whom a 
study of history converted to Christianity from unbelief) 
“ Christ lifted the gate of the centuries off its hinges with 
His bleeding hand ” — the case becomes far different. The 
greatness of Jesus, even if we regard Him simply as a man 
among men, not only transcends, but transcends incon- 
ceivably and immeasurably, the combination of all the 
forms and varieties of human greatness. The ages which 
have followed have all looked to 


“ Him first, Him last, Him midst, and without end. 


6 


THE LIFE OF LIVES. 

As they have contemplated Him, in the Unity of the 
Father and the Holy Spirit, they have exclaimed, “ Whom 
have we in heaven but Thee ? ” and as they have felt the 
penetrative, all-absorbing influence of His human person- 
ality, they have exclaimed, “ There is none upon earth that 
I desire beside Thee.” * 

i. History has borne its witness to Him. The Jews, 
who in their decadence no longer listened to Moses and the 
Prophets, but to Sadducean Priests and posing Pharisees, 
fell into utter and immediate ruin in accordance with His 
prophecy. The grandeur of the Roman Empire was hum- 
bled to the dust, and vanished before Him. The Northern 
nations, abandoning their ignorance and savagery, knelt 
humbly before “ The White Christ,” and, conquerors 
though they were, accepted the religion of the Christians 
whom they had conquered. “ In all my study of the an- 
cient times,” wrote the German historian Johann von 
Muller, “ I have always felt the want of something, and it 
was not till I knew our Lord that all was clear to me ; with 
Him there is nothing that I am not able to solve.” 

The great rulers have claimed their authority from Him 
alone, and have confessed His absolute pre-eminence. The 
first Christian Emperor wove upon the labarum of his 
armies His cross of shame; and it is set in jewels on the 
diadems of many kings. The oldest crown of Europe — the 
famous iron crown of Lombardy — was venerated most be- 
cause it was believed to be made of an iron nail from the 
cross on Golgotha. “ Bow thy head, Sicambrian,” said St. 
Remigius to Clovis after the victory of Tolbiac ; “ burn 
what thou hast adored, adore what thou hast burned ! ” 
Godfrey of Bouillon, when crowned King of Jerusalem, 
would not wear a crown of gold where his Saviour had worn 
a crown of thorns. Rudolph of Hapsburg, founder of the 
great Empire of Germany, when no sceptre could be found 
amid the tumult of his coronation, grasped a crucifix and 
swore that that should be his sceptre. Napoleon, the last 

* Ps. lxxiii. 25. 


THE DIVINE BIRTH. 


7 


great conqueror of modern days, said in his exile, “ I know 
men, and Jesus Christ is not a man. Superficial minds see a 
resemblance between Christ and the founders of empires and 
the gods of other religions. That resemblance does not 
exist. There is between Christ and all other religions 
whatsoever the distance of infinity : from the first day to 
the last He is the same — always the same, majestic, simple, 
infinitely firm and infinitely gentle. Between Him and 
whoever else in the world there is no possible term of 
comparison.” * 

2 . POETRY is the choicest flower of all human thought ; 
and just as the greatest poets of the ancient world who 
knew God — like Isaiah, and Amos, and the Psalmists — had 
sung of the coming Christ, so, since He was born, all the 
supremest poets without exception — Dante, Shakespeare, 
Milton, Goethe, Wordsworth, Browning, Tennyson — have 
come to Him with their singing robes about them, and laid 
their garlands most humbly at His feet. Truly 

“ Piety hath found 

Friends in the friends of Science, and true prayer 
Has flowed from lips wet with Castalian dews.” 

Nay, even in the ancient heathen world, supreme poets have 
stretched blind hands of faith and prayer to the Unknown 
Deliverer. ALschylus, sublimest of the Athenian tragedians, 
in his greatest drama, makes Hermes say to Prometheus: 
“ Expect not at all any termination of this thy anguish till 
some one of the gods appear as a successor to thy toils, and 
be willing to go down into the unlighted Hades, and around 
the gloomy depths of Tartarus.”f And Virgil, sweetest of all 
the Roman singers, wrote in his Fourth Eclogue a prophecy 
of the Golden Age which was at hand, and the Child* whose 
manhood would inaugurate a reign of peace in a world of 

* In a conversation with Genl. Bertrand, Comte de Montholon, Rhit de la 
Captiv. de V Empereur Napoleon. 

f JEsch. Prom. v. 1026-1029. 


8 


THE LIFE OF LIVES. 


beauty ; and this he wrote in such strains as almost elevated 
him to the rank of an inspired Seer. 

3. Philosophy has occupied the minds of some of the 
loftiest of the human race, and it has been the lifelong 
pui suit of many a 

“ Grey spirit, yearning in desire 
To follow knowledge, like a guiding star, 

Beyond the utmost bounds of human thought.” 

But these grave and earnest students of the problem of the 
world have often either sunk into despondency, like Zeno 
and Marcus Aurelius, for lack of the hope which Christ has 
inspired into the hearts of men ; or, like Plato, they have 
looked yearningly forward to some Unseen Deliverer whom 
as yet they knew not, though they were convinced of the 
awful necessity for His Advent. Kant used indignantly to 
repel every word spoken against the historic Saviour, and 
regarded himself as a mere bungler, interpreting Him as 
best he could.* “ Philosophy,” said Pico della Mirandola, 
“ seeks truth. . . Religion possesses it.” f 

4. Art reveals to us the Unseen. It teaches us to see, 
and what to see, and to see more than we see with our 
bodily eyes; and since Christ was born, all the greatest Art 
in the world, without exception, has been consecrated to 
His glory. To Him have been reared those “ Epic poems 
in stone,” those glorious Churches and Cathedrals, shadowy 
with immortal memories, which make us exclaim, 

“ They dreamt not of a perishable home 
Who thus could build ”; 

and under whose hallowed shade we feel that 

“ Bubbles burst, and folly’s dancing foam 
Melts if it cross the threshold.” 

To His glory the greatest of sculptors set free the impris- 
oned angels which, to his imagination, seemed to be strug- 

* Vorowski, Life of Kant, p. 86. 


f Pic. Mirand., Opp. 359. 


THE DIVINE BIRTH. 


9 


gling in the blocks of unhewn marble; to His glory Giotto 
and Leonardo, Raphael and Luini, Vittore Pisano and 
Lorenzo di Credi, Giovanni Bellini and Carpaccio, Albrecht 
Diirer and Holbein — and with them the greatest of all the 
painters, down to our own Millais, and Burne-Jones, and 
Holman Hunt — have devoted the strongest and purest of 
their powers. For love of Him, and with no thought 
of gain, Fra Angelico and Sandro Botticelli painted their 
soft and silent pictures, even as, long centuries earlier, the 
poor and persecuted Christians of the Catacombs had made 
the walls of those dark corpse-crowded galleries bright 
with their emblems of Orpheus, the Dove, the Fish, the 
Vine, and the Fair Shepherd with the lamb or kid upon His 
shoulder. From the earliest dawn of the Gospel down to 
the present day, no pictures have been comparable in 
greatness to those in which the supremest artists have con- 
secrated to the memory of Christ the glory of the fair 
colours, and the inspiration of hallowed thoughts. 

c. And to take one other all-embracing sphere of human 
intellect, the sphere of SCIENCE, in that region, too, the 
most eminent human souls — men like Copernicus, Bacon, 
Leibnitz, Descartes, Haller, Pascal, Ray, Franklin, Her- 
schell, Agassiz, Faraday, and many others — not losing sight 
of the Creator in the multitudinous marvels of His crea- 
tures, have looked to Christ as their Lord and their God. 
“ A little Philosophic,” as Bacon said, “ inclineth a man’s 
mind to Atheism, but depth in Philosophic bringeth men’s 
minds about to religion.”* Among the Coryphaei of 
Science two names stand supreme — Kepler and Newton. 
Kepler wrote of Christ with the profoundest reverence, and 
Newton — “ the whitest of human souls ” as well as one of 
the most richly endowed — raised his adoring eyes to heaven 
in uttermost simplicity, and sincerely believed in the Lord 
Jesus Christ with all his heart. The first mortal eyes 
which ever observed the transit of Venus were those of 
* Bacon, Essay 16. Of Atheisme. 


IO 


THE LIFE OF LIVES. 


Jeremiah Horrocks, then a humble curate at Hoole. He 
hurried to his telescope in the intervals between three 
Sunday services, and, though his observation was of such 
consummate astronomical importance, he recorded in his 
diary — a nd the sentence is carved upon the tablet placed to 
his memory two centuries later in Westminster Abbey — 
that he broke off his work to goto the humble service in 
the little village church — “ ad majora avocatus quae ob haec 
parerga negligi non decuit .” 

On one occasion a friend, Sir Henry Acland, found 
Michael Faraday in tears ; with his head bent over an open 
Bible. “I fear you are feeling worse,” he said. “No,” 
answered Faraday, “ it is not that ; but why, oh, why will 
not men believe the blessed truths here revealed to them ?” 
A humble and reverent study of the laws which God has 
impressed upon the Universe has made 

“ The pale-featured sage’s trembling hand 
Strong as a host of armed deities, 

Such as the blind Ionian fabled erst : ” 

and yet of those sages, from Copernicus to Faraday, and 
down to the most eminent of our living students of Science, 
the foremost have not only had faith in God, but also have 
believed rightly in the Incarnation of our Lord Jesus 
Christ. 

6. So, then, for Earth’s loftiest intellects — as one of the 
foremost and most learned poets of our own generation 
has sung — 

“ The acknowledgment of God in Christ, 

Accepted by the reason, solves for thee 
All problems in the world, and out of it.” 

And the same is true of those who have evinced a yet 
diviner greatness by scaling the loftiest moral heights and 
showing the utmost glories of self-sacrifice. If the men of 
loftiest genius in the world have acknowledged Christ, this 
was if possible even more the case with those who have 


THE DIVINE BIRTH. n 

conferred on the human race the highest and most deep- 
reaching services of pity and goodness. What was it but 
the Divine trembling pity which he had learned from 
Christ, and the commission which he had received from 
Him, that sent forth St. Paul to preach the Gospel amid 
his daily death of hatreds, miseries, and cruel persecutions, 
till, like the blaze of beacon fires kindled from hill to hill, 
its glory flashed from Jerusalem to Antioch, to Ephesus, 
and to Troas, and thence leapt over the sea to Athens, to 
Corinth, to Imperial Rome, and even to our Britain, the 
Ultima Thule of the World? What made the Roman 
lady Fabiola spend her fortune in founding hospitals at 
Rome, and in distant lands? Why did St. Jerome bury 
himself in the Cave of the Nativity at Bethlehem to trans- 
late the Bible from the Hebrew into Latin ? What made 
the boy St. Benedict fly from the allurements of Rome to 
the Rocks of Subiaco and found the order to which learn- 
ing owes so deep a debt? Why did St. Bonaventura, 
when asked the source of his great learning, point in 
silence to his Crucifix? Why did St. Thomas Aquinas, 
when asked by Christ in vision, Bene scripsisti de me, Thoma. 
Quam mercedem recipies ? reply immediately “ Non aliam 
nisi Te , Domine ? " Why did sweet St. Francis of Assisi 
strip himself of everything, and, by living as a pauper and 
a beggar, infuse new life and holiness into an apostatising 
and luxurious world? What led St. Francis Xavier to lay 
aside his rank and his pleasures, and become a wandering 
missionary, gaining by his sacrifice a happiness so intense 
that he even prayed God not to pour upon him such a 
flood-tide of rapturous beatitude ? What sent the Baptist 
cobbler, William Carey, with his first collection of £13 
2s. 6d., to evangelise the mighty Continent of Hindostan ? 
Every one of these, and thousands more of all those whose 
lives have been a blessing to the world, would have 
answered “ CHRIST.” 

What but the love of Christ constraining him led John 


12 


THE LIFE OF LIVES. 


Howard to toil among plague-stricken prisoners, until his 
death at Cherson, on the Black Sea, “ clothed a nation in 
spontaneous mourning,” and/ 4 he went down to his grave 
amid the benedictions of the poor * ? What made 
Elizabeth Fry go unaccompanied among the wild, de- 
graded, brutalised women of Newgate, and take them by 
the hand, and raise them from the depths of their fallen 
humanity? Why did men like Thomas Clarkson, Granville 
Sharpe, Zachary Macaulay, and William Wilberforce, with 
an energy which nothing could daunt, with a persistence 
nothing could interrupt, use their time, their talents, their 
fortunes, and every energy of their minds and bodies — and 
that in spite of ridicule, hatred, peril, and reproach — “ to 
save England from the guilt of using the arm of freedom 
to forge the fetters of the slave ” ? * What sent Father 
Damien to wretched and squalor-stricken Molokai, to live, 
and catch the leprosy, and die a leper among the lepers in 
the dismal isle? What made Lord Shaftesbury vow him- 
self, while yet he was a Harrow boy, to works of mercy 
which added the brightest jewel to the glory of Queen 
Victoria’s reign ? What enabled him — amid the venomous 
attacks of the Press and the world, and the chill aloofness 
of the clergy — to toil on until he had inaugurated the 
Ragged School movement, and passed the Ten Hours and 
the Factory Bills ? Why should the poor Portsmouth 
cobbler, John Pounds, have troubled himself, day after 
day, to gather the ragged waifs into his stall, and teach 
them with letters torn down from the advertisements upon 
the walls, and so — poor and ignorant as he was — to give an 
impulse to our great national system of education? What 
influenced Robert Raikes, the Gloucester printer, to begin 
the work which established Sunday Schools throughout 
the length and breadth of the world ? “ I thought, Can 1 

do nothing for all these wandering little ones ? A voice said 
to me ‘ Try.’ I did try, and lo ! What hath God wrought ! ” 

* From the epitaph on Granville Sharpe in Westminster Abbey. 


THE DIVINE BIRTH. 


Or take the best and most widely known of the effective 
workers of to-day amid the slums of unutterable squalor 
and degradation. Ask them what is the hidden force 
which sustains them in the long and thankless self-sacrifice 
of their lives, amid the scorn of worldlings and formalists, 
who look down upon them from the lordly altitudes of 
their own utter inferiority. What made General Sir Henry 
Havelock face so many sneers for holding Bible classes 
among his soldiers, and winning them to Total Abstinence ? 
What made General Gordon so kind to the poor, ragged, 
homeless boys of Greenwich ? 

One and all, they would give the same answer, “ The 
Love of Christ constraineth us.” They would be ready to 
say with St. Ignatius, “ Come fire, and the cross, and 
crowds of wild beasts ; come tearings, breakings, and 
crunching of my bones; come the mutilation of my mem- 
bers, and shatterings of my whole body, and all the dread- 
ful torments of the Devil, so I may but attain to Jesus 
Christ.”* He felt that “ he who is near to the sword, he 
who is among the wild beasts, is near to God.” f 

We are trying, they would say, to walk in the footsteps, 
we are trying to continue the work, of Him who was the 
Good Physician, of Him who went about doing good. 
We would fain be imitators of our Lord and Saviour Jesus 
Christ — of Him who taught that Love is the fulfilling of 
the Law ; of Him who summed up the Law of God in 
Love to Him and to our neighbour. Has any unbeliever 
rendered to mankind the millionth part of such immortal 
services ? I am not aware of a single supreme effort for 
the amelioration of the manifold miseries of mankind which 
has not been due to the inspiration of Christian enthusiasm. 
“ There is nothing fruitful but sacrifice ” — and the noblest 
and most continuous self-sacrifice which the world has seen 
has sprung simply from the belief in, and the imitation of, 
Jesus Christ. 

* Ignat. Ep. ad Rom. v. 


f Id. ad Smyrtt. iv. 


14 


THE LIFE OF LIVES. 


Christianity, then, is the highest, the most divine, the 
most eternal blessing in the world. It has been so in all 
these nineteen centuries; it is so in all the best conditions 
of our existence, and not to believers only, but even to 
those who deny, even to those who blaspheme Christ. But 
Christianity, had it only been a dead creed, or a purified 
ideal, or an organised society, would have been powerless. 
As a system of doctrine, or a code of loftier morals, it 
would have achieved but little. The permanent life, the 
regenerative force, the irresistible inspiration of Christianity 
is Christ. 

It will be seen, then, that the reason why we believe in 
the records of that miraculous birth, of those angel 
melodies, of those bending Magi, is not only because they 
stand recorded by those who were far too feeble to have 
invented them, and of whom every one would have said, 
“ I would rather die than lie ” — but because, being so 
recorded, they have received the attestation of God Him- 
self, seeing that the whole subsequent history of the world 
seems to us to have set its seal to the belief that they are 
true. 

To us the records of Christ in the Gospels seem the 
reverse of non-natural or needless. If any man can really 
believe that Humanity is the result of the working of 
mechanical laws, deaf, and dead, and dumb, “ blind as 
Fate, inexorable as tyranny, merciless as death — which 
have no ear to hear, no heart to pity, and no arm to 
save ” ; if any man can really persuade himself, not that 
“ God formed man out of the dust of the earth, and 
breathed into his nostrils the breath of life,” but that man 
is^only the accident of accidents — the casual outcome of 
unconscious material forces — then with such a man it is 
simply impossible to argue at all. His mental peculiarities 
must be wholly different in kind from those of the human 
race in general. And deej? below the surface of an avowed 
infidelity there often lurks an instinctive conviction that, 


THE DIVINE BIRTH. 


15 


after all, we are the creatures of God’s hand. Even the 
reckless and depraved conspirator, who made an arrogant 
boast of his shallow scepticism, cried out on the scaffold, 

“ O God, if there be a God, save my soul, if I have a soul ! ” 
But if we believe even so elementary a truth as that 
God made man, then if God created the first Adam — if 
God created him who, whether literally or in an allegory, 
fell by eating that forbidden fruit 

“ Whose moral taste 

Brought sin into the world, and all our woe ” — 

we cannot see the least difficulty in the belief that God also 
clothed with human existence, by the exercise of His 
supernatural power, His own Son, the second Adam, who 
came to redeem and save the fallen race. If indeed, God 
were some ruthless Moloch, to be appeased by 

“ Blood 

Of children’s sacrifice, and parents’ tears " ; 

if He were like the Ahriman of the Persians, or the Typhon 
of the Egyptians, or the Sheeva of the Hindoos, or the 
Atua of the New Zealanders — we might suppose that He 
would care nothing whether men perished in utter misery 
and corruption or not. But to all who believe that God is 
Love, and that, in spite of the insoluble problem of the 
existence of evil, “ love is creation’s primal law,” to them 
a Divine interposition for the redemption and deliverance 
of mankind seems even more in accordance with Eternal 
Power than man’s original creation. The instinct of mercy 
in our own nature forbids us to accept the Epicurean dream 
of gods who lie beside their nectar and 

“ Smile in secret, looking over wasted lands, 

Blight and famine, plague and earthquake, stormy deeps and fiery 
sands, 

Clanging fights, and flaming towns, and sinking ships, and praying 
hands.” 


j6 THE LIFE OF LIVES. 

If Creation be but an ordinary exercise of the Divine 
power, why should /^-creation be less so? If God made 
man, and “ breathed into his nostrils the breath of life 
and man became a living soul,” why was it impossible or 
unlikely that Christ should be “ born of a pure Virgin”? 
What seems impossible to man is always possible to God. 
And when God saw His children — and “ we are all His off- 
spring,” as even the heathen recognised* — wandering and 
lost in the wilderness of shame and death — since God is 
God, and God is Love, it would have seemed to us infinitely 
less believable that He would leave the creatures of His 
hand to perish in their wickedness, than that His mercy 
should provide for them a way of salvation. There is no 
other name under heaven whereby we can be saved, except 
the name of Christ ; and this seems to us a sufficient reason 
for, a sufficient explanation of, the truth that for us men 
and for our salvation, Christ took our nature upon Him, 
and was made in the likeness of sinful flesh. 

And the more we study and learn what Christ was, and 
how He lived, and what He has done, the deeper will be 
this our conviction that He whom we worship, He whom 
we acknowledge afc the Lord of Glory, came not into the 
world by the ordinary processes of human birth, but that 
when the fulness of the time was come, “ God sent forth 
His Son, born of a woman, born under the Law, that we 
might receive the adoption of sons.” f 

But after all, the strongest part of the evidence to us is 
that we have “ the witness in ourselves .” J We know that 
God is He “who also stamped us as with a seal for Him- 
self, and gave us the earnest ” — the arrhabo , at once pledge 
and part payment — “of the Spirit in our hearts.’** It is 
“ with the heart that man believeth unto righteousness.” § 
If we would see Christ, we must, as Origen said, leave the 

* Acts xvii. 28. tov yap ical yhog hapkv (St. Paul, quoting from Aratus and 
Cleanthes. Cf. Virgil Georg., iv. 221-25). 

f Gal. iv. 4. if 1 John v. 10. § Rom. x. 10. 


THE DIVINE BIRTH. 


i7 


crowd of faithless disciples with the demoniac whom they 
cannot cure, and must ascend the mountain top.* Of 
every true Christian it may be said that “ His seed is in 
him ! ” f and if “ the natural man receiveth not the things of 
the Spirit of God because “ they are foolishness unto him,”:): 
yet spiritual things are spiritually discerned. They who 
are spiritually-minded recognise the truth not only by the 
reason, but by the heart.§ “Christian faith is a grand 
cathedral, with divinely-pictured windows. Standing with- 
out you see no glory, nor can possibly imagine any; 
standing within , each ray of light reveals a harmony of 
unspeakable splendour.” [ 

This is a demonstration stronger than any criticism can 
take away, though to all such criticism, even on its own 
chosen ground, we can offer what to us — as to the vast 
majority of God’s most gifted as well as of His humblest 
sons — seems to be a decisive refutation. 

* Orig. c. Cels. vi. 77. f 1 John iii. 9. % 1 Cor. ii. 14. 

§ Pascal, PensSes, iii. 208. | Nath. Hawthorne, Transformation , p. 262. 


CHAPTER II. 


THE UNIQUE SUPREMACY OF JESUS. 

“ To whom will ye liken Me, and make Me equal, and compare Me, that 
we may be like ? ” — Is. xlvi. 5. 

Avroc evqvQpQirrjoev, cva rjfidg QeonoiriQafiev . — ATHANASIUS, De Ittcarn ., p. 

5 i. 

“ Dicimur et filii Dei ; sed Ille aliter Filius Dei." — AUGUSTINE, in 
PS. ii. 

“ Try all the ways of righteousness you can think of, and you will find 
no way brings you to it except the way of Jesus.” — Matthew Arnold. 

We believe, then, in the Miraculous Birth of our Saviour 
Christ; and our belief is confirmed when we examine the 
records of all history through and through, and find that the 
Babe, at whose birth the heavens burst open to disclose 
their radiant minstrelsies, stood ALONE, UNIQUE, SUPREME 
among all the million millions of every age of all the sons 
of men. It would be more amazing that such an one — 
“holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners,” and, 
even in His human humiliation, but “ a little lower thaa 
the angels ” ; — that One who has thus visibly been made 
“the heir of all things”; — that One who was foremost in 
the love and adoration of countless brethren, and to them 
a motive force of incomparable and inexhaustible vitality, — 
should have been born not otherwise than the mass of 
ordinary men. An infinite catastrophe required an infinite 
interference. God had created men sinless; it required a 
new man, even the Lord from Heaven, to uplift him from 
that gulf of sin into which he had been plunged by choos- 
ing the evil, and refusing the good, until his whole nature 

18 


UNIQUE SUPREMACY OF JESUS. 19 

had become perverted, the whole head sick, and the whole 
heart faint. 

And here is a point which may be tested. The records of 
the ages are open to us. History unfolds to our eyes her 
ample page, “ rich with the spoils of time.” We know 
enough of tens of thousands of human beings to enable us. 
to judge *of them ; and we know enough at least of all the 
greatest of mankind to enable us to compare them with 
Him whom we worship as the Son of God. 

The unique supremacy of Jesus is especially illustrated 
by His sinlessness. By confession of all Scripture, and of 
all humanity, from the beginning until now, there never 
has been any other man who, being in human flesh, was 
not a sinner. There is no man that sinneth not, no, not 
one.* Our Lord Himself said to His disciples, “ When ye 
have done all that is commanded you, say, We are unprof- 
itable servants.” f A thousand years earlier the Psalmist 
had said, Enter not into judgment with Thy servant, O 
Lord, for in Thy sight shall no man living be justified.” \ 
Seven and a half centuries before the Incarnation, Isaiah 
had said, “ We are all as an unclean thing, and t all our 
righteousnesses are as filthy rags.” § But those who knew, 
and day by day had lived with the Lord Jesus, and had 
watched His least actions, and shared His inmost thoughts, 
bear witness with one voice that “ He did no sin.” || And 
He, in whose mouth there was no guile, and who was “ meek 
and lowly of heart,” yet spoke of Himself, as did all His 
Apostles, as of one who could not sin,T and as always doing 
the things that pleased God. ** 

Other human beings have become the founders of forms 

* 1 Kings viii. 46 ; Rom. iii. 10. f Luke xvii. 10. 

X Ps. cxliii. 2. § Is. lxiv. 6. R. V. “ A polluted garment.” 

| 1 John iii. 5 ; 1 Pet. ii. 22. 

«[[ Heb. vii. 26. Comp. iv. 15 ; 2 Cor. v. 21 ; 1 Pet. i. 19, ii. 22, iii. 18 ; Rev. 

iii. 7. 

** John viii. 29. 


20 


THE LIFE OF LIVES. 


of religion adopted by whole peoples and generations, and 
have been surrounded by legends with a blaze of miracles. 
Yet enough has been recorded of their lives and teaching 
to enable us to contrast them with the Saviour of the 
World, and to show that they lie as far beneath Him as the 
earth is beneath the highest heaven. 

Let us take three such— the founders of the three reli- 
gions to which, with Christianity, the great majority of the 
human race belong. 

i. Buddhism is said to number among its votaries many 
millions of mankind, or nearly one-third of the human race. 
“ The Buddha ” is not the name, but the title of the 
founder; his name was Gotama, and he was often spoken 
of as Sakya Muni, or “Sakya the Sage.” He was born 
about B. C. 624. Nearly every fact and detail of his life is 
lost in the dim mist of extravagant traditions. He lived 
in prehistoric times, and the sacred book — the Tripitaka, or 
“ Three Baskets” — which professes to record his doctrine, 
was not given to the world till centuries after his death. 
Of Sakya Muni therefore we can only judge by the religion 
which he taught — by the ideal which he set before himself 
and his followers, and the results which that religion has 
produced in the world. 

Though in a certain sense Sakya Muni may be called 
“The Light of Asia,” and though Buddhism numbers more 
adherents than any other religion in the world, yet, tried 
by any standard whatever, Buddha cannot for a moment 
be placed in the most distant comparison with Christ. 

His ideal was in some essential particulars radically false, 
and even pernicious. There is an uncleanly abjectness in 
some of his precepts, a narrow selfishness in his morality. 
His religion is a dreary atheism which tends to merge into 
idolatry * ; his heaven an extinction of individual exist- 
ence ; his piety a perverted bodily service. He taught 

* “ II n’y a pas trace de l’idee de Dieu dans le Boudhisme entier. ” Barth. 
St. Hilaire, Le Buddha , p. iv. 


UNIQUE SUPREMACY OF JESUS. 21 

that there was “no God, no creation, no Creator — nothing 
but Mind minding itself/’* “ Insufficient for Time, and re- 
jecting Eternity, the triumph of his religion is to live with- 
out fear, and to die without hope/’f Its ideal is the life of 
its Bhikshahs, who, besides professing faith in Buddha, en- 
gaged to lead a life of self-denial, celibacy, and mendicancy, 
and to enstrange themselves from all domestic and social 
obligations. ^ 

Buddhism, among many other glaring deficiencies and 
errors, involves a practical denial of the doctrine of man’s 
immortality. It is a religion of despair, for it only 
offers a possibility of weary and endless metamorphoses, to 
be crowned at last by that obliteration of personal exist- 
ence — that final loss of individuality — to which he gave 
the name of Nirvdna. Barth£lemy St. Hilaire, who made 
a special study of the subject, says, “his religion is a spirit- 
ualism without soul, a virtue without duty, a morality 
without liberty, a world without nature and without 
God.” 

And what have been the religious results of Buddhism? 
There are men of excellent character and holy life among 
Buddhists as in all other religious communities, for God 
doth not leave Himself without witness among those whom 
He has made, and “in every nation he that feareth God 
and doeth righteousness is accepted of Him.” § But 
Buddhism as a religion leaves the multitude with little but 
a false ideal and an unilluminated despair. “Vice had no 
intrinsic hideousness, and virtue was another name for cal- 
culating prudence ; love was little more than animal sym- 

* Max Mtiller, Chips , p. 269. 

f Sir J. Em. Tennant, Christianity in Ceylon , p. 227. 

\ Prof. Wilson says: “ Belief in a supreme God is unquestionably a modern 
graft upon the unqualified atheism of .Sakya Muni ” ( Journal of Asiat. Soc., 
xvi. 255). Wilson, Essay , i. 360. “Sin is, in the view of the Buddhist, a 
necessary thing: it is a cosmical and not a personal evil.” Hardwick, Christ 
and Other Masters , i. 226. 

/ § Acts x. 35. 


22 


THE LIFE OF LIVES. 


pathy ; duty was devoid of moral motive. The Buddhist’s 
principle of action was ‘ I must * ; he could not say ‘ I 
ought' ” * 

And the national outcome of Buddhism is utterly unin- 
spiring. It wholly fails to create great nations or heroic 
deeds. The nations which profess it wither into unpro- 
gressive uselessness, adding little or nothing to the litera- 
ture, the art, the science, the political wisdom, or the 
moral enthusiasm of the human race.f “ Its inherent 
principles were such as left it well-nigh powerless in the 
training of society, and therefore it has left the countries 
which it over-ran the prey of superstition and of demon- 
worship, of political misrule and spiritual lethargy.” 

2. Take another religious founder, CONFUCIUS, or Kung- 
foo-tsze. He was born B. C. 551, a few years after the 
death of the Buddha. The personal life of Confucius was 
highly respectable and correct, but his religion, if religion 
it can be called, does not furnish us with a single inspiring 
element. It was all lived on the dead level of conventional 
commonplace. It was an ideal of cold propriety and arti- 
ficial respectability. It laid great stress on etiquette. He 
was narrow, cautious, and conservative. In Confucianism 
there is hardly any worship except the worship of ances- 
tors, and yet it is very doubtful whether Kung-foo-tsze 
even believed in the actual continuance of life after death. 
When closely questioned on the subject he only gave hesi- 
tating and uncertain answers. All that he could say was 
that “ he sacrificed to the dead as if they were present,”;]: 
and he said to his disciple Ke Lob, “ While you do not 
know about life, how can you know about death? ” “ He 

threw no new light,” says Dr. Legge, “ on any of the ques- 
tions that have a world-wide interest. He gave no impulse 
to religion. He had no sympathy with progress.” § “ The 

* Hardwick, i. 239. f Barthelemy St. Hilaire, Le Bouddha . 

\Li-ki, p. 121 (Ed. Callery). 

§ Legge, Life and Teaching of Confucius , p. 115. 


UNIQUE SUPREMACY OF JESUS. 23 

last words he uttered savour not of hope and exultation, 
but of bitter disappointment.* 

The religion of Confucius can hardly be called a religion 
at all. It might be described as conventional polytheism, 
merging into atheism. * He deliberately avoided the sub- 
jects of God and Immortality. It is true that, in the arid 
desert of his writings, one may find here and there a tiny 
oasis. Once, when his disciple Tsze Rung asked him to 
sum up all religion in one word, he answered, “ Is not reci- 
procity such a word ? ” f ; and by “ reciprocity ” he meant 
something distantly akin, though immeasurably inferior to 
“altruism” — a faint and far analogy of our duty to our 
neighbour. Again, I find in his writings the sentence, 
“ Heaven means principle.” I am informed by a Chinese 
scholar of the highest authority that it is extremely doubt- 
ful whether this translation is correct, for it is taken from 
the maxims professedly drawn from the works of Kung-foo- 
tsze by the Jesuit R£gis, the genuineness and exactitude of 
whose Confucian aphorisms has been seriously questioned. 
But here again we must, in any case, interpret the maxim 
by the illustration of it in the sage’s life ; and, put to this 
test, it shrivels into very small dimensions. 

And what result has Confucius produced in the empire 
in which his teaching prevails ? It is an empire of stagnant 
decadence, full of corruption and cruelty. The Chinese 
are like a clever boy, who has grown to manhood, but whose 
mental development has been arrested at fifteen. Their 
religion has ended in deplorable morals, contented futility, 
and unprogressive stagnation. Its meagre formalism has 
never attracted the least respect from the inquirers of the 
world. 

3. We know much more of Mohammed, the founder of 
the fourth great religion of the world, than we do of Sakya 
Muni or Kung-Foo-Tsze. But to compare him with the 

* Neumann, in Ilgen Zeitschr., vii. 19. 
f Doctrine of the Mean , xx. Analects , xv. 


24 


THE LIFE OF LIVES. 


Lord Christ would be a falsity too glaring for the most 
fanatical unbeliever. In his own Qu’ran he stands con- 
demned. He has to defend his sensual irregularities by the 
fraud, or the self-deception, of pretended revelations.* He 
knew himself too well to make any claim of moral perfec- 
tion. In one Sura (48) God says to him, “ We have 
granted thee a decisive victory, that Allah may forgive thee 
thy sins, both past and future ” ; and in another (40) he is 
bidden to pray for the forgiveness of his sins. His last 
broken words were : “ O God, pardon my sins — yes — I 

come.” 

Looking at Islam as a religion — its fanatical intolerance, 
its savage ruthlessness, its demoralising polygamy, its ever- 
deepening rottenness — who would dream of comparing it 
even for a moment with the religion of Christ ? 

And what has been the destiny of Mohammedan nations ? 
Theoretically, both Mohammed and his followers recognised 
the holiness and the prophetic mission of Jesus — whom 
they nominally venerate as the prophet Issa — though in 
many countries they spit in execration when a Christian 
passes them. The strength of Mohammedanism in Arabia, 
and in the countries which were conquered by its votaries, lay 
in its proclamation of one great forgotten truth — the Unity 
of God. All that is of eternal validity in Islam its prophet 
learned directly from Jews and from Christians. Beyond 
this, it contains hardly a single element of the smallest 
value. Mohammed did indeed render one service to his 
adherents by the rigorous prohibition of strong drink. To 
this is due the fact that a Turk will, in a fortnight, recover 
from wounds which would send an ordinary English soldier 
to a certain grave. But when the first dan of splendid fanat- 
icism ceased, one Mohammedan nation after another sank 
into effete corruption. Nothing can be lower, more 
squalid, more wretched, more depraved than the condition 

* See his conduct towards Zeinab, the wife of his faithful servant Zeyd. 
Quranxxxiii. 36. His ideal of Paradise is purely sensual. Id. lvi. 22. 


UNIQUE SUPREMACY OF JESUS. 25 

of entire Mohammedan populations in Asia ; and in Europe 
the heart of humanity is sickened by the debasement, the 
brutality, and the many atrocities of “the unspeakable 
Turk.” 

By comparison, then, with the founders of the main reli- 
gions of the world, Jesus stands not only supreme, but 
absolutely incomparable. He is elevated above them as 
high as the heaven is above the earth. He is separated 
from their human imperfections by an interspace as wide 
as the East is from the West. 

Perhaps, however, it will be said that Sakya Muni, 
Kung-foo-tsze, and Mohammed were Easterns and Asiatics ; 
and that Europe has ever been the continent of energy, of 
progress, of the supremacy of human thought. 

Well, the annals of the human race lie open before us. 
We know intimately all that can be known of “ the glory 
that was Greece, and the grandeur that was Rome.” The 
Greeks and Romans were the dominant progressive races 
of the ancient world. They belonged to the noblest branch 
of the human family, and spoke languages memorable for 
strength, beauty, and perfectness. They have expressed 
their thoughts and aspirations in literature which can never 
die. Surely, if anywhere in the wide world, we might look 
among these great and glorious nations for some men — if 
such have ever existed — who can be put in comparison 
with the man Christ Jesus. 

Is even one such to be found? 

i. The GREEKS — and especially the Athenians — in the 
culmination of their national development, were a truly 
splendid race. Physically they could boast of specimens of 
beauty, and of perfection in the development of “ the 
human form divine,” such as the world has never seen sur- 
passed. Intellectually they produced, in the course of little 
more than one brief century, a galaxy of brilliant stars. 
Their average intellect was far above the average intellect 
of Englishmen. They had philosophers like Heraclitus, 


26 


THE LIFE OF LIVES. 


Thales, Socrates, Plato, Zeno, Epicurus, and Aristotle, 
“ the master of those who know.” They had poets like 
Pindar, ^Eschylus, Euripides, Sophocles, Aristophanes, 
and many more. They had historians like Herodotus, 
Thucydides, and Xenophon ; orators like Demosthenes ; 
statesmen like Pericles ; men of science like Archimedes 
and Euclid ; sculptors like Phidias and Praxiteles ; painters 
like Zeuxis and Parrhasius; soldiers like Miltiades, Themis- 
tocles, Alexander. Did a race so gifted produce in its 
zenith one man who can for a moment be placed in com- 
parison with Christ ? 

The name of Socrates might occur to some, but not to 
any who have most deeply studied what is recorded of him. 
That no Greek known to us was more outwardly blameless 
than he, may at once be conceded ; yet both of his revering 
disciples, Xenophon and Plato, represent items of behaviour, 
and describe incidents in his biography, which, had they 
been narrated of Christ, would instantly shatter every 
fragment of belief that He was “ God manifest in the flesh.” 
The family life of Socrates, his views about ordinary moral 
questions, his estimate of women, who constitute one-half 
of the human race, rose in no particular above the ordinary 
Greek ideal. He could make himself intentionally and 
intolerably irritating. His attitude towards sin was danger- 
ously, even ruinously, tolerant and familiar. Can we 
conceive of the humblest of Christ’s followers talking as 
Socrates talked with Theodota* or with Agathon,f or mak- 
ing the coarse remark which he made about Critias ? or 
dismissing his wife and children in the hour of death with 
the cold remark, “Let some one lead her away home.”J 
Even taking the word “ sinless ” {ava^aprrjto^) in its 
lowest and most externally legal aspect, Xenophon himself 
says in so many words, “ I see no single human being con- 
tinuing in a sinless course,” — and that, be it remembered, 
though sins of sensuality were regarded by most Greeks — 

*Xen. Mem. n. II. f Plat. Sympos. p. 4. \ Plato. Phaed. 9. 


UNIQUE SUPREMACY OF JESUS. 27 

•even by the most eminent philosophers, and apparently by 
Socrates himself — as hardly sins at all, but as cxdiacpopa y 
matters of indifference either way. Cicero was a deep 
student of philosophy, and he tells us that all the philoso- 
phers were at variance as to what should be the ideal of a 
man perfect in wisdom, “ if ever he might be expected to 
exist.” Even from a purely pagan standard he could not 
have regarded' the life of Socrates as spotless, for he says, 
speaking merely of the victory over pain, “ Never yet have 
we seen any man of perfect wisdom.” * Never has the 
whole world seen any man — save Christ alone — in whom 
there has been either perfect wisdom or perfect holiness. 
He at once created and fulfilled that divine ideal. 

PLATO— amid the exotic perfumes of many of his 
dialogues, and the dry dialectics of others — has indeed 
written for us one of the most remarkable of “ the uncon- 
scious prophecies of Heathendom.” He has even been 
called “ a plank from the wreck of Paradise, cast upon the 
shores of idolatrous Greece.” f Yet what chance would 
Christianity have had if its Apostles and Evangelists had 
written in the tone of the Phaedrus or the Symposium, 
or devised such a Republic as Plato’s, with its tolerated and 
worse than tolerated crimes, including the degradation of 
the multitude, the exposition of children, and the com- 
munity of women? Well might Plato yearn for the Deliv- 
erer for whose coming he, like many of the wisest of the 
heathen, felt there was an awful necessity, and who (as he 
believed) would come at last. 

But, as far as ethics are concerned, the ideal drawn by 
Plato is the purely negative one of outzvard integrity, with 
no reference to the inner life or to the heart, out of which 
proceed evil thoughts; nor does he furnish any hint of the 
means whereby alone this ideal can be attained. He seems 
only to have regarded it as a picture hanging in the air, 

* Cic. Tusc. Disp. ii. 22. See Ullmann, The Sinlessness of Jesus , p. 97. G. T. 

f Coleridge. 


28 


THE LIFE OF LIVES. 


and neither says that it has been, nor expresses the belief 
that it ever will be, realised in human life.* 

ii. When we turn from the Greeks to THE ROMANS, we 
find an imperial race which, strong in patriotism and 
courage, conquered the choicest part of the habitable 
world in its purer and better days. But its philosophy was 
in great measure second-hand, and Roman civilisation grew 
corrupt to the heart’s core under the triple curses of 
imperialism, slavery, and sensuality. Conquered Greece 
terribly and effectually avenged herself on her conquerors 
by infecting them through and through with her worst 
vices, till 

“ She whom mightiest kingdoms curtsied to, 

Like a forlorn and desperate castaway 
Did shameful execution on herself.” 

Few indeed of the great Roman poets — neither Catullus, 
nor Virgil, nor Horace — are free from the deadly taint of 
the worst impurity. “All things,” says Seneca, “are 
crammed with wickedness and vices . . . there is a com- 
petition of worthlessness. . . Sins are no longer furtive — 
but openly parade themselves ; and so publicly has worth- 
lessness prevailed in all bosoms that innocence is not only 
rare, but non-existent.” f As they reprobated God, He 
had given them over to a reprobate mind. They became 
fools in their reasonings, and their senseless heart was 
darkened. Professing themselves wise, they were befooled.^: 
The most striking comment on the paraded infamies of 
the decadent empire may be seen in the hateful sludge of 
Sodom and Gomorrha which bestrewed every street in 
Herculaneum and Pompeii. And as a consequence, 

“ On that hard Roman world, disgust 
And utter loathing fell. 

Deep weariness and sated lust 
Made human life a hell.” 

* See Dem. de Cor. p. 322. 

f Sen. De Ira , ii. 8. Comp. Juvenal Sat. xiii. 26-30* 

X See Rom. i. 22. 


UNIQUE SUPREMACY OF JESUS. 29 

Not a few of the Romans, and Cicero among them, re- 
garded the elder Cato as an ideal, yet Cato, in the affairs 
of private life, was guilty of a callousness and greed which 
would have stamped with infamy the humblest Christian. 
What sort of ideal is presented by the virtue of a man who, 
when his slaves became old and useless, ruthlessly turned 
them out to starve ? or of a man who, meeting a young 
nobleman coming out of a haunt of vice, congratulated 
him on his virtue — Made virtute esto ! because he chose 
only such channels for the gratification of his animal 
desires ? 

There are, however, two men in later Roman history — 
the one a great and brave emperor, the other “ poor and a 
slave, and lame, yet dear to the immortals” — who did 
attain to a very high degree of virtue, and may be regarded 
as “ the bright consummate flowers of pagan morality.” 
Epictetus, 

“ The halting slave who in Nicopolis 
Taught Arrian, when Vespasian’s brutal son 
Cleared Rome of what most shamed him,” 

wrote in Greek, and can hardly be counted as a Roman, 
though he was a subject of Rome and a slave in Roman 
households. It must be remembered that when he and 
Marcus Aurelius wrote, Christianity had long been in the 
air. Some breath of its divine teachings had been wafted 
into the miasma which was ever reeking upwards from the 
pestilential marshes of heathen corruption. Much pure, 
though imperfect, morality may be found in the pages of 
Epictetus. Yet his lofty Stoicism is a flower which has no 
root on which to live and thrive. His teachings never 
have been, or could be, a guide to the multitude, or a 
light to them which sit in darkness ; and as for moral per- 
fection, he frankly declares it to be unattainable. “ What 
then ? ” he asks, “ is it possible here and now to be fault- 
less ? Impossible ! But this is possible — to have ever 
been straining every energy towards the avoidance of sin.” * 

* Epict. iv. 12. 


30 


THE LIFE OF LIVES. 


I look on the “ little golden passional ” of the Emperor 
Marcus Aurelius as the most perfect moral book which 
heathen antiquity produced. It is Stoicism, touched — 
however unconsciously — with something of the Christian 
truth which the Emperor ignored, though by it he had 
been indirectly influenced. To ordinary ears it sounded 
like the despairing cry of an impossible virtue, and it was 
powerless to produce any effect upon the world. It did 
not for a moment stem — it was not even meant to stem — 
the awful tide of putrescence which rushed and swelled 
around him. It was but the salt of his own inner life pre- 
served in his private diary, but it wholly failed to have any 
effect on his wife, or his son, or the nearest members of 
his own family. The personal morality did not reach 
beyond himself, and it is tinged with an unspeakable sad- 
ness. We see him standing, in noble despair, upon the 
bank of the River of Life, pure as crystal, proceeding out 
of the throne of God and the Lamb : 

“ Tendentemque manus ripae ulterioris amore.” 

Of other pagans it is hardly worth while to speak. No 
one would hold up SENECA as offering an effective moral 
example. His ideal is very imperfect, and his life fell 
immeasurably below even that imperfect ideal. 

Philostratus drew a highly coloured picture of the Cappa- 
docian thaumaturge, APOLLONIUS OF Tyana, who flour- 
ished in the reign of Nero. It was probably intended to 
represent him as a loftier being than Christ. But on the 
showing of his own panegyrist — who evidently drew very 
largely on his imagination — Apollonius, if he was not a 
gross impostor, was not a man who commands any deep 
admiration. He was guilty of glaring faults, and the 
“ cloudy romance of the pagan sophist ” who pretended to 
delineate his individuality has attracted very little notice, 
and has not exercised the very faintest influence upon the 
moral progress of the world. 


UNIQUE SUPREMACY OF JESUS. 31 


In truth the pagan philosophers and poets disclaimed 
altogether the very possibility of sinlessness. Horace says : 

“ Nam vitiis nemo sine nascitur ; optimus ille est 
Qui minimis urgetur ; ” * 

and centuries before, Simonides had said: “To be a good 
man is impossible and not human ; God only has this high 
prerogative.” “We have never yet seen any born,” says 
Cicero, “ in whom there has been perfect wisdom.” f And 
Plato warns us that it is futile to exonerate ourselves by 
casting the blame on fortune, or demons, or anything 
rather than ourselves. \ 

And what was the total issue of Paganism in its utmost 
splendour, and most unquestioned dominance ? Did the 
teaching of any of the great Greek philosophers or Roman 
moralists produce the slightest appreciable effect in uplift- 
ing the world in general into loftier aspirations or a purer 
atmosphere ? It must be sadly confessed that, among the 
noble and heroic figures of Greek and Roman life, we can 
scarcely select one who distantly approached the Christian 
standard of holiness, or even of pure morality. The final 
culmination of Greek and Roman development in the days 
of the Empire was an unspeakable corruption. Nothing 
can be darker than the picture presented so unblushingly 
by Aristophanes in his day, and by the writers of the 
Anthologia in theirs. In Juvenal, and Suetonius, and 
Petronius Arbiter, and Apuleius, we have unbared to us 
the very depths of Satan. 

Other writers are like a troubled sea foaming out their 
own shame with filth unspeakable. Over the history of 
Tacitus there seems to hang an atmosphere of the deepest 
gloom. In page after page he reveals the horror of times 
which, amid all their external gorgeousness, bore on them 
a truly infernal stamp. But it required the inspired elo- 
quence of a St. Paul effectually to brand the harlot brow 

fCic. Tusc. Disp. ii. 22. % Plat. Rep. x. 16. 


Hor. Sat. i. 3, 68. 


32 THE LIFE OF LIVES. 

of Paganism with the stigma of her abominations ; and it 
is well that, in the first chapter of the Epistle to the 
Romans, he should have torn the painted mask from that 
leprous forehead, and should have shown what a heart of 
a gony — rank with hatred, and burnt out with vilest self- 
indulgence— lay throbbing under the purple robe. 

I ask, in passing, whether it does not show the unique 
exaltation of Christ — whether it does not throw a reflected 
light of antecedent probability on His miraculous birth — 
that whereas, in all the Pagan world, alike in the East and 
in the West, we cannot point to so much as one human 
being to whom we could apply the epithet “ holy ” — that, 
while, in all Pagan literature, during so many centuries, the 
very conception of “ holiness ” has no existence — now , 
because of Christ’s teaching, and the force of His divine 
indwelling life, there is no town, no village, scarcely even a 
family, in which we cannot find holy women and holy men ? 

“ Why should it be thought a thing incredible with you,” 
asked St. Paul of Festus and King Agrippa, “ that God 
doth raise the dead ! ” * Even then he could say in the 
presence of his enemies and accusers that “ this thing was 
not done in a corner.” But he was speaking in the earliest 
dawn of Christianity, before the facts to which he bore 
witness had been tested by nineteen centuries of human 
study and human progress ; before the Gospel had proved 
itself to be a divine regenerative force in all the world ; 
before it had been found by millions of every race and age 
— from philosophers in their studies to cannibals in the 
Pacific, and Indians in their wigwams on the frozen shores 
of Hudson’s Bay — to be the power of God unto salvation 
to all them that believe. The transcendence, the sinless- 
ness of the Lord of Glory have been searched as with 
candles by men of the most consummate intellect in many 
epochs, and not one of them has been able to question His 
unique superiority or to convince Him of sin. After these 
nineteen centuries of sanctification, of victory, of wisdom and 

* Acts xxvi. 8, 26. 


UNIQUE SUPREMACY OF JESUS. 33 

enlightenment, may we not ask with tenfold force of every 
sceptic, “ Why should it be thought a thing incredible 
with you that God should have granted to our fallen race 
the most priceless of all blessing by sending forth His Son 
into the world, and that He should have done this, not to 
condemn the world, but that the world through Him might 
be saved ? ” 


CHAPTER III. 

THE UNIQUE SUPREMACY OF JESUS ( continued ). 

“ Even in the Prophets, after they had been anointed by the Holy 
Spirit, was there found mention of sin.” — “ Unwritten Saying ” in the 
Gospel of the Hebrews. 

“ His beauty is eternal, his Kingdom shall have no end.” — Renan, 
Vie de Jesus , p. 457. 

“ The ideal representation and guide of Humanity.” — J. S. Mill. 

No sceptic, I think, will be able to dispute that — in the 
ancient world of Heathendom, and through all the aeons 
during which it existed — neither among the founders of 
world-wide religions, nor among the greatest philosophers, 
the brightest poets, and the best men whom all former 
history records, can so much as one be found who can be 
offered as a distant parallel to Jesus Christ. The best and 
greatest of them ail do not approach Him within any 
measurable distance, either in holiness of life, or perfect- 
ness of teaching, or in the ever advancing grandeur of the 
permanent results effected by His influence. But some 
might expect that, as THE JEWS were the recipients of a 
special inspiration, and since to them were entrusted “ the 
oracles of God/’ we should be able to find among the 
twelve Tribes of Israel during the twenty centuries of the 
Older Dispensation, at least one or two Saints or Prophets 
whose lives and teaching might place them on the same 
level with the Son of Man. Yet it needs but little search 
to prove decisively that such is not the case. 

What need is there to speak of Noah ? Little as we are 
told of that preacher of righteousness, we think of that 
shameful scene when he lay drunken and uncovered in his 
tent, and laid his curse upon his son and grandson. 

34 


UNIQUE SUPREMACY OF JESUS. 35 

Job, if he were a real person, and not created by the 
poetic imagination of the Jewish Haggadah, was in a 
lower sense “ a blameless man and an upright, who feared 
God and eschewed evil.” Yet he incurred the rebuke of 
the young Elihu for justifying himself rather than God, and 
when he is made to apprehend God’s majesty, he can only 
cry — 

“ Therefore I abhor myself, 

And repent in dust and ashes.” 

Abraham was “ the father of the faithful ” and “ the 
friend of God ” ; yet Abraham could twice be guilty of 
deception, and in other respects also shows the limitations 
of the nomad Sheykh. Other Patriarchs were still more 
imperfect. Isaac was guilty of deceit; Jacob of fraud, 
meanness, and partiality. 

MOSES, the mighty law-giver of Sinai, was God’s chosen 
mediator to deliver to Israel “the Ten words,” in which 
are summed up our duties to God and man ; yet Moses 
claims no exemption from human weakness, and records 
alike how he murdered the Egyptian and hid him in the 
sand, and how an outburst of unchastened anger forfeited 
for him the entrance into the Promised Possession. 

Of David and his terrible falls and manifold failures, 
though he was “ the sweet Psalmist of Israel,” there is no 
need to speak, for he does not conceal his own terrible 
guilt, and cries, “ Behold I was shapen in wickedness, and 
in sin did my mother conceive me.” 

Elijah shewed the imperfection of an angry temper, and 
his wrathful spirit was far different from the spirit of Christ. 

Jeremiah, though some have fancied that his character 
had suggested to the later Isaiah the ideal of the Sinless 
Sufferer, yielded to passionate despair, and cursed the day of 
his birth. Not one of these, nor any of the Prophets or 
deliverers of Israel, made the slightest claim to perfectness. 
The plain testimony of their experience invariably is that all 


36 THE LIFE OF LIVES. 

alike have gone astray, and that there is not one that 
sinneth not.* 

The Jews themselves, deep — almost unbounded — as was 
their veneration for these Patriarchs and Prophets of their 
race, never pretend that they were faultless. In one of the 
apologues of the Talmud, God is represented as demanding 
from the Jews some surety for their future obedience. 
They offer Abraham, and Isaac, and Moses. God’s answer 
is, “No! Abraham has sinned, and Isaac has sinned, and 
even Moses has sinned ; they cannot be your sureties.” As 
they can find no sinless man in all their annals , they offer to 
God their innocent little ones. And God accepted these, 
saying, “Yes, your little ones shall be your sureties,” even 
as it is written, “ Out of the mouth of children and little 
ones hast Thou built a bulwark, that Thou mightest still 
the enemy and the avenger.” 

As for later Judaism, its ideals shrank and shrivelled into 
utter pettiness. 

The two Rabbis whom the Talmud most admires and 
exalts are Hillel and Akiba. 

Hillel had sweet and noble elements in his character, 
but they were accompanied by very unpraiseworthy defi- 
ciencies. His highest teaching is defective from its one- 
sidedness and incompleteness. Anything more ludicrously 
absurd than the notion — maintained by some Jewish writers, 
like Geiger and Gratz — that Hillel was in any sense what- 
ever “the master of Jesus,” cannot be imagined! Hillel 
belonged, in all essential particulars, to the Pharisees, who 
of all others were most repugnant to the soul of Jesus. His 
mind and life were occupied in the elaborate discussion of 
infinitesimal puerilities of ritual, such as whether one might 
or might not eat an egg which a hen had laid on a feast day, 
if the feast day was coincident with a Sabbath, f whether, 

* See i Kings viii. 46 ; Prov. xx. 9 ; Eccl. vii. 20 ; 1 John i. 8-10. 
fThis is the question which occupies the 7th section of the second Book of 
the Mishnah, under the title Bitsah—“ the egg.” It is also called Yom tob. 


UNIQUE SUPREMACY OF JESUS. 37 

when you are carrying myrtles and perfumed oil, you ought 
first to bless the myrtles and then the oil, or first the oil 
and then the myrtles ; whether you ought or ought not to 
take off your phylacteries during the performance of certain 
natural functions ; whether you ought first to wash your 
hands and then fill the glass, or vice versa. Can we imagine 
how full of holy scorn Jesus would have been at the discus- 
sion of these nullities, many of which are even more weari- 
somely repulsive than those I have mentioned, and some 
of which are absolutely nauseous ? Again, with what holy 
indignation would Jesus have regarded the application of 
some of Hillel’s seven middot h, or rules of exegesis, which 
were used to turn Scripture into any purpose which Rab- 
binism might demand ! * * * § We need not conjecture with what 
pity and anger the Son of God would have treated Hillel’s 
decision that the words “ ervathdabhar ,” in Deut. xxiv. 1, f 
imply that a man may divorce his wife “ even if she cooked 
his dinner badly X and the thoroughly disingenuous shuf- 
fling by which he managed to set free his countrymen from 
the onerous Mosaic ordinance of letting property revert to 
its original owner in the Sabbatic year. He was cramped by 
the stagnation, the prejudice, the rigidity of party doctrine ; 
he lived and moved and had his being in the confined, 
heavy, turbid air of the Jewish Schools. § 

Of Rabbi Akiba in this connection it is not worth while 
to speak. He too was not only a Pharisee of the straitest 
sect of later Judaism, but his methods disgusted the more 
moderate even of his Pharisaic contemporaries.! He 

* See my paper on “ Rabbinic Exegesis.” Expositor v. 366 (1877). Subse- 
quent Rabbis expanded these rules, first to 13, then to 32, then to 49) Ham- 
burger Talm. Worterb., ii. 36). R. Ishmael said (Sanhedrin, f. 34, 1) that 
exegesis is like the hammer which breaketh the rock into pieces (Jer. xxiii. 29). 

f A. V. “ matter of nakedness.” 

JGittin, 90. 

§ See Lightfoot, Hor. Hebr ., p. 256. Geiger, Pharis. u.Sadd ., 36. Jost. 
Gesch ., iii., p. ill. Delitzsch, Jesus und Hillel, 1866. 

[| For instance R. Jose the Galilean, R. Eliezer Ben Azarai, R. Tarphon, and 


THE LIFE OF LIVES. 


38 

ostentatiously glorified, and was exclusively absorbed in, 
the very methods and minutiae of externalism which 
Christ most emphatically repudiated and denounced. His 
ideal of righteousness was inconceivably paltry and 
shrunken. The Messiah of this coryphaeus of particularism 
in its latest and least sensible views was not the Son of 
Man, but the False Messiah to whom he gave the name of 
Bar Cochba, “ son of a star,” but whom, after his deadly 
failure, the Jews characterised as Bar Coziba, the “son of 
a lie.” 

But if it be granted that, in all the previous centuries, 
moral perfectness was an unattained and even unimagined 
ideal, some may ask whether the same is true of the cen- 
turies which followed the birth of Christ. May not men 
have lived since the dawn of the Christian era, who, aided 
by the inspiration of the Gospel, not only surpassed in 
holiness the men of all previous ages, but may have even 
attained to the same moral perfectness as was manifested 
by their Lord ? Again the answer is a demonstrable and 
emphatic negative. The records of the Apostles and Evan- 
gelists themselves show proofs of the spiritual failures 
which they humbly acknowledge. The confession of St. 
Peter — “ Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O, 
Lord” — is amply confirmed by subsequent records of 
faithlessness, of misunderstanding, of cowardice, of dissimu- 
lation. St. Paul, after his conversion, evidently speaks 
in his own person when, after describing the struggles of 
“ a disintegrated individuality,” he cries, “ Wretched man 
that I am, who shall deliver me out of the body of this 
death?”; and he says with frank humility, “Not that I 
have already attained, or am already perfected, but this one 
thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and 

others. R. Jose Haglili was called “the horned ram,” because he rebutted so 
often the reasonings of Akiba. See the references to the Lifras and Josephus 
in which these passages of arms occurred in Hamburger’s Talm. Worterb ., ii. 36, 


UNIQUE SUPREMACY OF JESUS. 39 

reaching forth to those things which are before, I press on 
to the mark of the prize of the high calling of God in Christ 
Jesus.” * Yet, in spite of these efforts, he not only calls 
himself “ less than the least of the Apostles, who am not 
meet to be called an Apostle,” f but even characterises 
himself as “ the chief of sinners.”;): 

The faults of the Sons of Thunder — St. JAMES and St. 
John, the disciples whom Jesus loved — are not concealed 
in the Gospels ; and, if the later legends of St. John be true, 
they still exhibit traces of human passion and impetuosity. 

Nor is there one of all the later saints of Christendom — 
whether it be St. Ambrose, St. Augustine, St. Jerome, St. 
Chrysostom, St. Gregory of Nazianzus, St. Basil, or the 
saints of the later days, sweet St. Francis of Assisi, ardent 
St. Bernard, St. Bonaventura the Seraphic, St. Thomas of 
Aquino the Angelic Doctor, St. Francis Xavier, or St. Vin- 
cent de Paul — whose ideals were not more or less one-sided 
or mistaken. Every one of them would, with indignant 
humility, have repudiated the faintest attempt to represent 
him as perfect. Every saint of Christendom, kneeling 
humbly, on his knees, would have said to the Lord of his 
life, that 

“ Every virtue we possess, 

And every triumph won, 

And every thought of holiness 
Are thine alone.” 

“The young and unspotted, the aged and most mature, 
he who had sinned least, he who had repented most, the 
fresh innocent brow and the hoary head, they unite in this 
one litany, ‘ God, be merciful to me, a sinner ! ’ So was it 
with St. Ignatius ; with St. Aloysius ; with St. Rose, the 
youngest of the saints; with St. Philip Neri, one of the 
most aged, who, when some one praised him, cried out, 
‘ Begone ! I am a devil, and not a saint ! ’ ” § 

* Phil. iii. 12-14. f Eph. iii. 8 ; i Cor. xv. 9. 

§ Newman, Sermon on The Religion of the Pharisee. 


% 1 Tim. i. 15. 


40 


THE LIFE OF LIVES. 


“What are the saints,” asked Luther, “compared with 
Christ ? They are but as dewdrops scattered upon the 
head of the Bridegroom, lost in the glory of His hair.” As 
regards all varieties and combinations of virtue and excel- 
lence-all things which are true, pure, honest, lovely, and 
of good report, which have ever been manifested in the 
character of the children of God — all Christians would ex- 
press the conviction that 

“ They are but broken lights of Thee, 

And Thou, O Lord, art more than they.” 

So far, then, we have seen enough to leave us with the 
secure certainty that of all the multitudes of mankind with- 
out number, under every condition, and in every age and 
clime, not one can be compared to Him who revealed Him- 
self as the Son of Man and the Son of God. And this 
demonstrable uniqueness and unapproachable superiority — 
even if it stood alone — would not only go far to remove 
every shadow of difficulty from the record of His miracu- 
lous birth, but would lead us to suppose, were there no such 
testimony, that Jesus must have come into the world by the 
special intervention of an Omnipotent Love. The infinite 
supremacy of Christ Jesus in character and influence — the 
manner in which He is separated by an untraversable dis- 
tance from all who have ever lived on earth — would nat- 
urally lead us to believe that He could not have been born 
as other men are, and that the Son of Man, the Second 
Adam, was, in a far deeper sense than the first Adam, the 
Son of God. 


CHAPTER IV. 


THE TESTIMONY OF SCEPTICS AND FREE ENQUIRERS. 

“ Christ stands alone, and unapproached in the world's history." — 
Strauss. 

“ The Incomparable Man to whom the universal conscience has 
decreed the title of Son of God — and that with justice, since He has 
advanced religion as none other has done." — Renan. 

“ He stood in the first rank of the grand family of the true Sons of 
God.”— Ibid. 

“ The Chosen of God, His image. His darling, His world-guide, and 
world-shaper in the history of mankind." — Keim. 

“ The Well-spring of whatever is best and purest in human life." — 
Lessing. 

HITHERTO we have been led to the conclusion that Christ 
is “ the vital centre of Christianity, the pulsating heart from 
which it all proceeds, to which it all returns ” ; — that, with- 
out the force of His inspiring and ever-present Personality, 
Christianity itself would sink into nothing more than a 
system of morals and scheme of revelation. We have seen 
also that, demonstrably and by universal admission, Christ 
stands a Unique Being in the long annals of the world. 
There have been sceptics who have insinuated a faint and 
timid disapproval of some of His actions, and many have 
questioned the truth of the Gospels, and denied the divinity 
of Him whom they set before us. But it is worth while to 
pause and show that even over the most unfettered enquirers 
He has cast a spell which makes them hardly venture to 
hint at the most distant disparagement of Him. The 
beauty of His holiness compels them, almost in spite of 
themselves, to fall upon their knees, and to admit His un- 


41 


42 


THE LIFE OF LIVES. 


approachable supremacy even when they speak of Him as 
nothing more than Man. 

1. Spinoza (Ep. 23) said: “This is the highest thing 
which Christ said of Himself, namely, that He is the Tem- 
ple of God, since God chiefly manifested Himself in Christ; 
which St. John, that he might express it more efficaciously, 
clothed in the expression that 4 the Word was made flesh.’ ” 

2. LESSING called Christ “ the first trustworthy and prac- 
tical Teacher of the Immortality of the Soul.” 

3. ROUSSEAU concludes a famous passage with the words, 

“ If the life and death of Socrates are those of a sage, the 
life and death of Jesus are those of a God.” 

4. The awful transcendency of the life of Jesus over- 
awed even the flippant soul of VOLTAIRE, as we see in the 
account of his remarkable vision.* 

5. Kant was indignant when a critic compared his teach- 
ing with that of Jesus. “One of those names,” he said, 

“ before which the heavens bow, is sacred ; the other is only 
that of a poor scholar, endeavouring to explain to the best 
of his abilities the teachings of his Master.” 

6. SCHELLING spoke of Christ as “ the turning-point of 
the world’s history,” 

7. Strauss was the foremost champion of modern scep- 
ticism respecting Him, yet Strauss wrote that Jesus “ stands 
foremost among those who have given a higher ideal to 
humanity”; and that “it is impossible to refrain from 
admiring and loving Him.” “ Never at any time will it be 
possible to rise above Him, nor to imagine any one who 
shall be even equal with Him.” “ He is the highest 
object we can possibly imagine in respect of religion : the 
Being without whose presence in the mind perfect piety is 
impossible.” f 

8 . Goethe calls Him “the Divine Man, the Holy One,, 
the type and model of all men.” 

* See Diet. Philosophique, s.v. “Religion.” 
f Strauss, Vergangl, u. Bleibende, p. 132. 


TESTIMONY OF SCEPTICS. 


43 


9. CHANNING was a Unitarian, yet he wrote: “I believe 
Jesus Christ to be more than a human being. The combi- 
nation of the spirit of Humanity in its loveliest and tender- 
est form with the consciousness of unrivalled and Divine 
glories, is the most wonderful distinction of this wonderful 
character.” 

10. RENAN says: “Between Thee and God there is no 
longer any distinction.” “ His beauty is eternal, His King- 
dom shall have no end.” “ This Christ of the Gospels is 
the most beautiful incarnation of God in the most beautiful 
of forms.” * 

11. J. S. MILL wrote that “there is no better rule than 
so to live that Christ would approve our life.” 

12. The views of Keim diverge very widely from those 
of Churchmen in many points, yet he ends his Jesu von 
Nazara by saying that “ Christianity is the crown of all the 
creations of God, and Jesus is the chosen of God, God’s 
image, and best-beloved, and master-workman, and world- 
shaper in the history of mankind. He and no other is and 
remains the appointed standard-bearer of the world’s prog- 
ress, who shall triumph over the quagmires and the spirits 
of darkness of the nether Kosmos.” 

13. Theodore Parker testifies that “Christ unites in 
Himself the sublimest precepts and divinest practices. He 
pours out a doctrine beautiful as the light, sublime as 
heaven, and true as God.” 

14. Dr. CONGREVE, the head of the English Positivists, 
wrote : “ The more truly you serve Christ, the more thor- 
oughly you mould yourself into His image, the more keen 
will be your sympathy and admiration.” 

15. Dr. Martineau was a Unitarian, yet he speaks of 
Christ as “ the commissioned Prophet, the merciful Re- 
deemer, the inspired Teacher, the perfect Model, the 
heavenly Guide.” 

16. Matthew Arnold differed widely from views re- 

* Renan, At. cTHist. Rel ., pp. 175, 213. 


44 


THE LIFE OF LIVES. 


garded as orthodox, yet, after describing the True God as 
“the Eternal who makes for righteousness,” he adds, 
“from whom Jesus came forth, and whose Spirit governs 
the course of humanity.” 

17. I will only add the testimony of the anonymous 
author of Supernatural Religion . He — surely an unpreju- 
diced witness — spoke of Christ as “surpassing in His 
sublime simplicity the moral grandeur of Sakya Mouni, 
and putting to the blush the teaching of Socrates and 
Plato, and presenting the rare spectacle of a life, so far as 
we can estimate it, uniformly noble and consistent with His 
own lofty principles.” 

From the first, Jesus was “set for a sign which should 
be spoken against.”* His cross was “to the Jews a stum- 
bling-block, to the Gentiles foolishness.” f His earliest 
Apostles were denounced as “ pestilent fellows and ring- 
leaders of sedition.”:): His Gospel was stigmatised by the 
haughty Roman historians as a deadly and contemptible 
folly, to be classed with all monstrous and shameful 
things ;§ and Christians as “creatures of a deplorable, ille- 
gal, and desperate faction,” devoted to “ a depraved and 
measureless superstition.”! His followers were every- 
where spoken against T as hated for their enormities, as 
“characterised by their hatred for the human race ” ; ** as 
“ atheists ” — so that the cry against one of the poor Martyrs, 
St. Polycarp, as against Christians in general, was “ Away 
with the godless one!” ft Is it no proof of the Divine 
blessing and approval that, in spite of all this hatred and 
execration, which united all pagan society, philosophy, and 

* Luke ii. 34. \ 1 Cor. i. 23. \ Acts xxiv. 5. 

§ Tacitus Ann. xv. 44. Suetonius Ner. 16; Claud. 25. 

|| Caecilius in Min. Fel. Oct. viii. Comp. Dion Cassius lxvii. 14, and my 
Witness of History to Christ , p. 7; Light foot, Apostolic Fathers II. i. p. 260. 

Acts xxviii. 22. 

** Tacitus 1. c. Hist. v. 5. See Ep. Stnyrn. ap. Euseb. H . E. iv. 15. 
Mart. Polyc. 9. 

if Ep. Smyrn. ix. ; Lucian, Alex. Pseud, xxxviii. 


TESTIMONY OF SCEPTICS. 


45 


literature in a conspiracy of common detestation, the faith 
of Christ “ in the unresistible might of weakness shook the 
world,” over which, in spite of its being in flagrant disaccord 
with all that men naturally admire, it has since then main- 
tained the unquestioned dominance ? Many who more 
or less reject Christ’s divinity — such as Hase, Weisse, 
Schenkel,and others — still describe Christ as “ tin Untcum ,” 
“ ein Mysterium .” Thus sceptics (as Mr. Browning so 
admirably points out) 

" Bid us, when we least expect it, 

Take back our faith.” 

They say : 

“ Go home, and venerate the myth 
I thus have experimented with ; 

This Man, continue to adore Him 
Rather than all who went before Him, 

And all who ever followed after.” 

" Surely for this I praise you, my brother! 

Will you take praise in tears or laughter ? ” * 


Browning, Christmas Eve and Easter Day . 


CHAPTER V. 


THE GOSPELS. 

“ Quousque mens tua humi defixa erit ? Sacrilegii enim vel maximi 
instar est, humi quaerere quod in sublimi debeas invenire.'' — Cicero, 
Somii. Scip. Ad init . 

In the desire to disprove the Divinity of Christ, every 
possible ground of objection has been urged; and it may 
now perhaps be said, “Your argument depends ultimately 
on the genuineness and authenticity of the Gospels, and 
against the Gospels the spirit of hostile criticism has con- 
centrated its most powerful light." 

Yes ; but I say unhesitatingly that the result of that 
close and hostile criticism has not only left the substantial 
truth and accuracy of the Gospels untouched, but has, by 
its very failure and weakness, shown them to be of unas- 
sailable veracity. The Gospels exhibit on every page the 
simplex veri sigillum. They have no magnificent elo- 
quence, no thundering denunciations, no high-wrought arti- 
ficiality, no excited eulogies. They bear on the face of 
them the stamp of being unadorned and artless narratives 
of simple faith. 

We may compare the Gospels with the greatest books of 
other religions, and they stand out in magnificent superior- 
ity, though the Evangelists may have been far inferior in 
earthly gifts and philosophic genius to the great sages of 
the East. “ I confess," says a most competent witness, 
Professor Max Muller, “ it has been many years a problem 
to me, how the great books of the East should, by the side 
of so much that is fresh, natural, simple, beautiful, and true, 
contain so much that is not only unmeaning, artificial, and 
silly, but even hideous and repellant. This is a fact, and 

46 


47 


THE GOSPELS. 

* 

it must be accounted for in some way or other/’ But no 
one could say this of our Christian Gospels ; they do not 
contain one silly or one repellent word ; and what can 
account for their absolute supremacy, except that their 
writers bore witness to the simple truth ? 

The Evangelists simply could not have invented the his- 
tory which they record. Standing as they do immeasur- 
ably below the grandeur of their Master, we feel almost 
inclined to say that their invention of His teaching and 
character would have constituted a less believable miracle 
than any which they narrate. As Rousseau said, “ L’inven- 
teur en seroit plus etonnant que le h£ros.” These Galile- 
ans could never have subjectively elaborated ideals so 
inimitable, or morality so divine. They — even the greatest 
of the Apostles, even a Peter and a John — possessed no 
particle of what was regarded as learning in their own day. 
Their words are, as Origen described them, idiooTiKoi Xoyoi. 
When they stood before the Sanhedrin, the High Priests — 
the Kamhits, and Phabis, and Boethusim and Annanites, 
and the Rabbis — the Shammaites, the Hillelites, the Gama- 
liels, who were regarded with such reverence — looked down 
on these Galileans as aypay-fxaroi uaz ididoTcu — mere com- 
monplace nobodies, who had never had a learned educa- 
tion.* They spoke a coarse provincial dialect ; they 
possessed none of the exegetic lore of the Scribes ; they 
knew nothing of the Middoth or the Erubhin , nothing of 
Halacha or the Haggadah ; they belonged to the common 
amharatzim — the multitude who “knew not the law and 
were accursed.” f Such men could not even be pious, and 
a Pharisee felt polluted (so Hillel declared) if he so much 
as touched them with the hem of his garment. In the 
Gospels themselves the Evangelists constantly record inci- 
dents which show that they were “ dull and slow of heart 

* Acts iv. 13. 

f John vii. 49, emKardpaToc. The name dmai, from was also given 

to these “ Men of the People.” See Hamburger, s. v. Amhaaretz. 


48 


THE LIFE OF LIVES. 


to believe ” ; that they ignorantly misunderstood Christ’s 
allusions ; that without the aid of His tender condescension, 
they could not grasp the significance of His parables; that 
they were entirely unprepared for His line of action in 
many cases; that they would fain have hindered His 
divine purposes; that His plainest prophecies failed to 
impress their understandings ; that they were liable to 
petty jealousies and ambitions among themselves; and 
that, even after His resurrection, He had to upbraid them 
for their unbelief and hardness of heart.* Inferiority is far 
too weak a word to express the depth at which they stood 
below their Master. How could these Galilean peasants 
and fishermen, “ fresh from their nets, and with their clothes 
wringing wet” — how could tax gatherers and zealots, and 
men of individuality so unmarked that their fellows had 
little or nothing special to record about them, except their 
imperfections — how could they have invented a story, and 
imagined a character, which transcended them as infinitely 
as the heaven is higher than the earth, and which, when it 
was shining before them in heaven’s own light, they could 
but very dimly understand ? Who will believe that St. 
Paul, the learned Pharisee, who began with the most furi- 
ous rage against Christianity, was so credulous that — in 
defiance of all his predilections, and all his past training — 
he suddenly accepted as true a mass of myths, freshly in- 
vented by unknown Galileans ? Is there any one whose 
capacity for appreciating evidence is so paralysed as to 
believe “that the Holiest of Men was a deceiver, His disci- 
ples either deluded or liars, and that deceivers would have 
preached a holy religion of which self-denial is the chief 
duty ? ” f Whatever else the early Apostles, Disciples, and 
Evangelists may have been, they were undeniably holy 
men ; — would they have invented falsities, and then, in 
preaching them, have poured out their lives like water, and 
sacrificed everything which life holds most dear? 

* Mark xvi. 14. f Niebuhr, Lebensnachr i. 470 


THE GOSPELS. 


49 


The presence and the work of Jesus in Palestine in the 
days of the Herods are matters of ordinary history, as 
certain as any recorded in Tacitus or Dion Cassius. It 
would be the wildest of hypotheses that the poor Evangel- 
ists could have evolved out of their own consciousness a 
story so entrancing that, nineteen centuries later, it should 
be read with awe and ecstasy alike by emperors in their 
palaces and peasants in their hovels. Maories and Fijians, 
Kaffirs and Negroes, Esquimaux and Tahitians, can delight 
in the Gospels with no less intensity than men of the finest 
genius and the most consummate learning. 

The Synoptists exhibit no special skill, or power, or 
insight. Their main function is simply to narrate. 
They do not enter into theological disquisitions. The 
technical scholasticism of theologians leaves no trace 
on their pages. There is no learning in their allusions, no 
brilliance or profundity in their style. Their records are 
fragmentary and unchronological. St. Matthew, accus- 
tomed to the use of the stylus from his trade as a despised 
toll-collector, was probably the first to commit to writing 
a collection of Christ’s “ sayings ” ( Logia ) ; and he and 
the others, though guided by divine inspiration, yet in 
other respects followed the bent of their own individuality, 
and wrote as St. Augustine said, “ ut quisque meminerat , vel 
ut cuique cordi erat .” It must also be borne in mind that they 
do not profess to offer complete or exhaustive records. Our 
Lord uttered His prophetic woe on Chorazin and Bethsaida 
as cities which had witnessed His mighty works ; yet we do 
not know of a single miracle performed at Chorazin, and 
only one is recorded to have been performed at Bethsaida.* 

St. Matthew belonged to the social class which was, 
of all others, regarded with the greatest contempt, and 
beyond this we know scarcely a single fact about him. 
He wrote mainly for the converts from Judaism/)* It used 

* Mark viii. 22. 

f Hence in St. Matthew there are eleven quotations made by the Evangelist 


50 


THE LIFE OF LIVES. 


to be thought that his original work was in Hebrew,* but 
modern scholars now regard his Gospel as a composite one, 
formed partly from a Greek Gospel resembling that of St- 
Mark, and partly from a collection of our Lord’s sayings in 
Greek, used also by St. Luke ; the two documents having 
been welded together by a third redactor. 

St. Luke, as “ a physician,” had probably belonged at 
one time to the body of slaves in some wealthy house in 
Asia Minor. 

St. Mark recorded in his Greek Gospel, for Roman 
readers, f some of the vivid reminiscences of St. Peter, the 
Galilean fisherman. Not one of the three was in any other 
respect specially remarkable, and though all three wrote in 
Greek, their records are tinged with the Aramaic phrases 
of the earliest oral teaching. It is a gross absurdity to 

himself from the Old Testament, not counting those made by our Lord. In 
St. Mark, who wrote for Roman readers, there is only one (or, perhaps, two). 
In St. Luke, who wrote mainly for Greeks, three. In St. John, who wrote for 
the whole Christian world, there are nine. Each synoptist has his own special- 
ties. The subject of Prophecy is prominent in St. Matthew ; of Prayer in St. 
Luke, who also dwells much on the ministry of angels, and uses the Pauline 
word evayyeTi^eoQai more than twenty times, and aurrjpia four times. He uses 
the title 6 K vpioq for Christ much more frequently than the other Evangelists. 

* Euseb. H. E. iii. 39 ; Iren. Haer. iii. 1 ; Jer. Pref. in Matt. St. Matthew 
alone uses the Hebrew term “ the Kingdom of the heavens ” thirty-two times ; 
the other N. T. writers always call it “ the Kingdom of God.” 

f It is no part of my immediate object to enter into the problem of the origin 
of the Synoptic Gospels — a problem complicated by their close resemblances 
yet marked divergences. Even the verbal differences show that they did not 
slavishly follow each other. Thus St. Mark expresses “ through the eye of a 
needle” by 6ta Tfiv/uaXias papidog (Mark x. 25) ; St. Matthew by 61a TpvKT/fiaroQ 
fra<pidoc ; St. Luke, in the best reading, by dia TpfjpaTog ( 3 e?u)vi}s. To my own 
mind the theory of a common original fund of oral teaching best meets the 
peculiarities of the case. Many special touches in St. Luke seem to come 
from eye witnesses. The agreements are mostly in the story of the beginning 
and end of the life of Jesus. “Of some eighty-three paragraphs which the 
Synoptists have in common, only about thirty-four come in the same order in 
all three narratives — that is to say, in some forty-nine instances the Synoptists 
do not agree in the order of their narratives.” (Gilbert, The Student's Life of 
Jesus , p. 36.) 


THE GOSPELS. 


5 1 


suppose that they, and others like them, could have con- 
spired to deceive men by an imaginary character and a 
false narrative which, ever since, has altered the destinies 
and stimulated the noblest efforts of the world!* “ Their 
divinity,” it has been said, “ is in what they report, not in 
the way they report.” 

There are in the Fourth Gospel more marks of profound 
and spiritual genius. It concentrates on the person of the 
Saviour all the manifold sources of witness borne to Him 
by the Father and the Spirit; and by John the Baptist; 
and alike by men who believed and disbelieved in His divine 
authority. Far more deeply than the Synoptic Gospels it 
reveals the inmost nature of Eternal Life. Its “ emphatic 
monotony,” its mixture of extreme simplicity of language 
and grammar with unequalled majesty of thought, exercise 
over the mind a mysterious spiritual fascination. After 
the brows of the Apostles had been mitred with Pentecostal 
flame, when the Fall of Jerusalem came as the consumma- 
tion of the older aeon, and when the progress of years had 
shown that the “ Dayspring from on high ” was destined 
to broaden into the boundless noon, the insight of Chris- 
tians became more intense. The Gospel of St. John is 
crowded with internal evidences which prove the external 
attestation that it was the work of the Apostle whom Jesus 
loved. The “ most spiritual Gospel ” is also “ the most 
concrete.” In some respects it presents Christ under a 
more purely spiritual light than the Synoptic Gospels. 
Yet it is in closest agreement with the simpler and earlier 
narratives which it was written to supplement — and per- 
haps, in one or two less important particulars, to correct — 
but mainly (in the New Testament sense) to “fulfil,” i. e., 
to fill with a diviner plenitude of meaning. It dwells 
chiefly on the Judaean rather than on the Galilean ministry, 

* St. Mark adopted a Latin surname (Marcus), and he has in his Gospel ten 
Latin words transliterated into Greek — centurio, speculator , grabatus, quadran$> 

flagellum , sextarius , Pratorium, denari 21s, logic, census. 


52 


THE LIFE OF LIVES. 


because there is reason to believe that St. John was more 
familiar with Jerusalem than were the other Evangelists : 
but in no instance does St. John contradict the main 
particulars recorded by his predecessors. He distinctly 
recognises the ministry both in Galilee and Peraea, which 
after .the labours of the other Evangelists, it was needless 
fully to record. In every chapter he confirms the teaching 
which they preserve, and sets forth in all its majesty, but 
with more penetrating power, the same character which the 
Synoptists present. Without the Christ whom they had 
known, and heard, and loved, the Evangelists in themselves 
would have been nothing and less than nothing. It is as 
absurd to say that the Christ of these Gospels is a fiction 
as it would be to say that one who described the glories of 
the mountains had evolved out of his own imagination the 
everlasting hills, or that astronomers have invented the 
starry heavens. 

Fortunately we have direct proof of the incapacity of 
fiction to touch the life of Jesus without instantly betray- 
ing itself to be fiction. The Apocryphal Gospels were 
works of imagination, written by unwise and ill-instructed 
Christians who professed to adore Jesus and to believe in 
His Godhead. They were popularly attributed to great 
names, such as Nicodemus, St. Joseph, St. Peter, and St. 
Thomas. Yet in the desire and endeavour to exalt Him 
they unconsciously drag Him down to the level of those 
who wrote them. In the attempt to represent Him as 
sinless and divine, they pervert his ideal by their own 
marked imperfections. The four Gospels, because they 
tell the simple facts, do not record one saying or one inci- 
dent which we should wish to be obliterated, as weakening 
our faith or diminishing our reverence : the Apocryphal 
Gospels, because they indulge in fiction, scarcely tell us a 
single incident which we do not instinctively reject as false. 
From the first they deceived no one. They were recognised 
and denounced as apocryphal, and never won a particle of 


THE GOSPELS. 


53 


confidence. They depict Christ only to degrade Him, and 
thereby prove how impossible it was to set Him forth as 
divine except by the unadorned and simple truth. And 
we may estimate the force of contemporary evidence from 
the fact that it revolutionised the whole life and ideal of 
“ a Pharisee of the Pharisees,” the pupil of Gamaliel, 
incomparably the ablest Pharisee of his day — the Apostle 
St. Paul. Against the struggles of his own will, this great 
contemporary was driven into irresistible conviction, 
through doubt and denial. His knowledge of Jesus, which 
began in the vision on the road to Damascus, was “ not the 
fruit of a blind acceptance of unexamined Christian tradi- 
tion, but, as the case of his enquiry into the evidences of 
the Resurrection shows,* was arrived at by means of a 
lucid, keen, searching, sceptical observation, comparison, 
collection, and collation of such materials as were accessible 
to him.”f 

Surely, then, we may say of the Gospels with the utmost 
confidence, that “ we did not follow on the false track of 
myths, artificially elaborated,” but that we accept the 
simple truth at the hands of those who neither “ trafficked 
with,” nor “adulterated,” nor “mutilated,” nor “ misrepre- 
sented ” the Word of God. \ 

* i Cor. xv. 3-8. f Keim, i. 521, E. T. 

\ 2 Pet. i. 16 ; 2 Cor. ii. 17, iv. 2. 


CHAPTER VI. 


THE CLAIMS OF JESUS, AND THE SPELL HE EXERCISED. 

iva /melvij ra fir/ Galevdfieva. — Heb. xii. 27. 

“ Nemo pen se satis valet utemergat ; oportet manum aliquis porrigat, 
aliquis educat.” — S en. Ep. 52. 

We may, then, be assured of the genuineness of the Gospel 
narratives, and they prove that Jesus was a Perfect Man. 
All subsequent experience, and the survey of nineteen 
centuries of history, suffice (as we have seen) to show that, 
as a Perfect Man, He stands alone in the annals of the 
world — unapproachable, unparalleled. 

From heathen sources — from Tacitus,* Suetonius, f and 
Pliny J — though they all refer to Jesus, nothing is to be 
learnt. In Jewish sources — Josephus and the Talmudists 
— we find deliberate silence or frantic calumny. “ The 
True Word ” of the Platonist Celsus (a. d. 176) was suffi- 
ciently refuted by Origen. Some of these writers merely 
mention His name as the founder of a religion, and the 
Talmudists have a few wild and monstrous fictions about 
Him, but none of them charge Him with sin or crime. 
The silence of Josephus — for the famous allusion to Jesus 
in his Antiquities (xviii. 3, 3) is either an interpolation, or 
has been tampered with by Christian writers — was obvi- 
ously intentional. That it was not the silence of ignorance, 
but of embarrassment, is certain, for he knew all about 
John the Baptist, § and regarded him with high respect; 
and in speaking of the martyrdom of James, the Lord’s 
brother, if that passage be genuine, he actually attributes 

* Tac. Ann. xv. 44. f Suet. Nero 16 ; Claud. 16. 

X Plin. Ep. x. 97, 98. %Antt. xviii. 5, 2. 


54 


THE CLAIMS OF JESUS. 55 

the final destruction of Jerusalem to the Nemesis due to 
that crime. The allusions in the writings of later Judaism 
— which will not name Jesus, but speak of Him as “the 
fellow,” “the fool,” or “he who ought not to be named” 
— are beneath contempt. The “infamous, multiform, 
mediaeval lampoon ” against Jesus, known as the “ Toldoth 
Jeshu ,” gives expression to the screams and curses of a 
hatred only excusable because it was partly, alas ! due to 
the savage ruthlessness of Christian persecution. 

But in what way do the fourfold records of the Evangel- 
ists demonstrate this unique sinlessness 'and perfectness of 
the Saviour of Mankind ? They do so, because in all they 
narrate they show us One who lived His life amid the 
ordinary surroundings of men, yet wholly without a trace 
of evil, or of incompleteness in His moral supremacy. 

Jesus lived in the full blaze of publicity, (i.) Many fol- 
lowers had been under His constant teaching. (ii.) 
Myriads had heard His words and seen His works in Gali- 
lee. (iii.) He had thousands of enemies, who hated Him 
with a singular intensity of that unscrupulous hatred which 
always exhibits itself in its vilest and most ruthless forms 
among religious disputants. 

His followers, who had seen Him in the most private 
and confidential intercourse of common life, narrated from 
intimate knowledge the incidents of His ministry. In all 
that they narrate we see the glory of Godhead veiled in 
human form, and we cannot find the least trace of that evil 
impulse (the Yetzer ha-rah) which, the Jewish Rabbis said, 
divided with the good impulse (the Yetzer ha-tod) the whole 
domain of human existence.* 

We see that the sinlessness of Jesus was not a miraculous, 

* See Hershon, Rabbinic Commentary on Genesis , p. 21. Treasures of the 
Talmud , p. 161. In Gen. ii. 7, the word for “ He formed” has two Iods, 
which the Rabbis explained of the /'tw impulses. On Gen. viii. 21, they re- 
marked that the Yetzer ha-rah is implanted in men, whereas the Yetzer ha-tob 
is only a guest. See, too, Sanhedrin , f. 64, I. 


THE LIFE OF LIVES. 


56 

but an achieved sinlessness. He was perfectly man, as well 
as truly God. He was tempted in all points like as we are, 
yet without sin. He was “ tempted of the Devil,” not only 
in the wilderness, but to the end ; and the temptations 
would have been no temptations if it had been antecedently 
impossible for Him to have succumbed to them. After the 
great Temptation in the wilderness the Devil left Him, but 
it was only “ for a season.” He had to face those two-fold 
and opposite influences to swerve from the path of perfect- 
ness, which arise on the one hand from the allurements of 
ease, and on the other from the agonies of suffering. His 
temptations appealed to His human nature, His human 
imagination, His human sensitiveness to anguish ; they en- 
deavoured to sway at once the desires of the mind and 
the weakness of the flesh. Jesus was not humanly endowed 
with an impossibility of sinning — a non posse peccare ; but 
with the power to achieve the complete and final victory 
over every impulse to sin — a posse non peccare. This victory, 
even more than His miracles, was sufficient to convince His 
followers of His Divine Nature, so that from the earliest 
days of Christianity, as we learn from Pliny the younger, 
they sang hymns to Him as God.* 

Be it observed that the superhuman grandeur which 
seemed to invest Him as with a garment was something 
wholly apart from all earthly pomp of circumstance, or 
splendour of endowments. In position He was nothing 
more than a Galilean peasant, the lowliest of the lowly, 
“the carpenter” of despised and proverbial Nazareth. 
The Prophet whom the multitudes saw before them was a 
nameless youth, seated on a mountain, or speaking to them 
from a boat. When the world, even the hostile and 
sceptical world, involuntarily bows before Him, it is not 
because of any of the gifts or qualities which ordinarily 
dazzle mankind. Jesus was no Poet, entrancing the souls 
of men with passionate melodies. He was no mighty 
Leader like Moses, emancipating nations from servitude, 

* Pliny, Ep. x. 97. 


57 


THE CLAIMS OF JESUS. 

or, with illuminated countenance, promulgating to them a 
code of systematic morality. He was no rapt Orator, now 
stirring them to tumultuous emotion, now holding them 
hushed as an infant at the mothers breast. He was no 
Warrior, smiting down his foes in triumphant victory, and 
breaking from the necks of the oppressed the yoke of 
foreign bondage. Yet turning away from the choir of im- 
mortal Poets ; from all “ famous men and the fathers who 
begat us ” ; from mighty Orators who have played on 
the emotions of men as on an instrument, and swept them 
into stormy passion, or moved them to sobs of pity, as the 
wind sweeps into wild music or into soft murmurings the 
strings of an ^Eolian harp ; from all magnificent Con- 
querors ; from the Pharaohs in their chariots whirled into 
battle amid the serried ranks of their archers ; from Assyr- 
ian monarchs leading their captivity captive, and hunting 
the lion amid their lords ; from Babylonian Emperors with 
the crumbs gathered beneath their tables by vassal kings ; 
from deified Caesars in their dizzy exaltation; from Aurung- 
zebe or Haroun, flaming in their jewelled robes and sur- 
rounded by kotowing courtiers — the world, abandoning all 
its own predilections, has felt constrained to drop its 
weapons, to tear the garlands from its hair, to kneel lowly 
on its knees before the Son of Man in His meek humilia- 
tion — in the faded purple of His mockery, in His crown of 
torturing thorns ! 

And His sinlessness is confirmed from every source. 

(i.) His OWN Family witness to it. His mother and 
His brethren had lived with Him from infancy in the same 
poor hut at Nazareth ; they had eaten and drunk and slept 
with Him ; had been with Him by night, by day, in the 
most solemn intercourse, at the most unguarded moments, 
during the bright gaiety of boyhood and the passionate fire 
of youth, with an intimacy which would have rendered con- 
cealment impossible, if, even in His thoughts, He had been 
unfaithful to God His Father. ' His ways were not as their 


THE LIFE OF LIVES. 


58 

ways, nor His thoughts as their thoughts. He set aside 
their advice; He checked their occasional intrusiveness.* 
He did not adopt their ideals of patriotism ; He bitterly 
disappointed the earthly form of their Messianic hopes — 
yet they were so convinced of His sinlessness, that, after 
His resurrection, these Desposyni&s they were called — these 
members of our Lord’s human family — became, like James 
the Bishop of Jerusalem and Jude the author of the Epis- 
tle, pre-eminent and pronounced believers in His divine 
supremacy. 

(ii.) St. John the Baptist was united to Him by 
earthly kinship, and had probably seen something of Him 
in His earlier years. This prophet of the wilderness was 
one of the sternest of mankind — an uncompromising foe to 
all insincerity ; a man who did not for a moment hesitate to 
rebuke cruel autocrats, and, with rude impetuosity, to strip 
the mask from the hypocritic face of painted Pharisees ; a 
man who, so far from feeling flattered when he won con- 
verts among the pompous religionists of his day, bluntly 
denounced them as “the offsprings of vipers.” At the 
presence of Jesus, though as yet He was but the unknown 
carpenter of Nazareth, the voice which terrified multitudes 
and made kings tremble is hushed into accents of humility, 
and the strong personality which over-awed a proud and 
passionate nation becomes like that of a timid boy. He 
who baptised all others, shrank from baptising the Son of 
Man. Before the ministry of Jesus had begun, or a single 
miracle had been wrought, John pointed Him out to His 
disciples as “ the Lamb of God which taketh away the sins 
of the world,” and as One whose shoe’s latchet he is not 
worthy to stoop down and unloose. 

(iii.) The Apostles lived and moved about with Him 
under all varieties of outward condition, alike in the sun- 
light of His early ministry, and amid the deadly hatred 
and bitter persecution which drove Him forth as a wan- 
* See Matt. xiii. 46 ; Mk. iii. 31 ; Luke viii. 19 ; John vii. 5, 10. 


THE CLAIMS OF JESUS. 59 

derer and a fugitive who had not where to lay His head ; 
and though their worldly Messianic hopes were so utterly 
blighted, though they had to bear for His sake the loss of 
all which men most desire — yet, with one voice, they speak 
of Him as the Holy One of God ; as One who did no sin, 
neither was guile found in His mouth ; as One who alone 
had the words of eternal life ; as the Christ, the Son of the 
Living God ; as holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from 
sinners, and made higher than the heavens ; as the sinless 
High Priest, who is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, 
and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.* 

(iv.) The Pharisees, the Sadducees, the Herodians, 
all hated Christ with that deadliness of malignity which 
has been invariably exhibited against all the best and 
holiest men ; alike by Priests, Jesuits, and Inquisitors, 
against all who oppose their own falsities, and by worldings 
who resent all unswerving sincerity and stainless authority. 
These enemies laid traps for Jesus; tried to entangle Him 
in His talk; combined in shameless and clever machinations 
to entrap and to destroy Him; did their utmost to embroil 
Him with the rulers, and to disillusion the Galilean multi- 
tude of their devotion for Him. They supported their own 
false judgments by frantic lies. Yet the only charges 
which they could bring against Him were that He “broke 
the tradition of the elders” — which He did designedly, 
because the so-called “tradition” had become a paltry 
rubbish-heap of quantitative goodness — and that “ He had 
a demon, and cast out demons by Beelzebul, the prince of 
demons,” which was a mere scream of insane hatred, and 
involved the absurdity of supposing that the prince of the 
demons was going about as an angel of holiness. 

(v.) One of His Apostles, Judas Iscariot, giving himself 
up to the temptation of greed, and probably maddened 
with sullen wrath at the frustration and disappointment of 

♦Acts iii. 14, viii. 35, xxii. 14 ; 1 Pet. ii. 21, iii. 18 ; 1 John ii. i, 29. iii. 5, 
7 ; 2 Cor. v. 21 ; 1 Tim. iii. 16. 


6o 


THE LIFE OF LIVES. 


all his worldly hopes, became a traitor. Perhaps he laid to 
his soul the flattering unction that there could be no great 
sin in doing that which High Priests, and Scribes, and 
Pharisees urged him to do, and paid him for doing. Yet 
even after that humiliating condemnation, which he might 
have been tempted to regard as the final disproof of His 
Master’s Messianic claims, he was so haunted by the pangs 
of intolerable remorse that he flung down unspent upon the 
Temple floor the thirty pieces of silver for which he had 
sold his soul, and rushed forth to his hideous suicide with 
the confession that he had been guilty in that he “ had 
betrayed INNOCENT BLOOD.” 

(vi.) The Sanhedrists, violating the traditional com- 
passionateness of Jewish tribunals, and goaded on by 
priestly hypocrites, sought false witness against Him, and 
could find none. There was not a single fault or crime 
which they could establish against Him, and their eager 
false witnesses utterly broke down. They condemned Him 
on His true claim — extorted from Him by the illegal 
adjuration of the High Priest, and proved by the subse- 
quent history of the whole Jewish and Gentile world — His 
claim to be the Christ. 

(vii.) The Roman Lady, Claudia Procula, the wife of 
Pilate, was so haunted by the thought of Jesus that, terri- 
fied by dreams, she bade her husband take no part in con- 
demning “ that Just Person.” 

(viii.) Before PlLATE the Jewish priests, with base and 
shifty malice, brought against Him four charges: (i) that 
He was a deceiver ; (2) that He stirred up the people ; (3) 
that He forbade to pay tribute to Caesar ; (4) that He called 
Himself a King. All four charges, in the sense in which 
they were urged, were absolute lies ; and Pilate — bad, cruel, 
blood-stained, wilful as he was — saw them to be lies, bom 
of the deadliest hatred. Awed by the Prisoner’s meek 
grandeur, unoffended even byHis majestic silence, trembling- 
before the mysterious spell which He exercised while He 


THE CLAIMS OF JESUS. 61 

stood before him with the agony of pain and the marks of 
shame and spitting upon His brow, the haughty Roman 
Procurator was constrained to utter again and again the 
emphatic testimony, “ I find in him no fault at all.” 

(ix.) The Crucified Malefactor who witnessed the 
ultimate humiliation of Jesus ; who shared in the unspeak- 
able infamy of His last agonies; who had, at first, joined 
in the taunts of the other malefactor against Him ; who 
had challenged Him — if He were not the rnesith whom the 
priests and religious world of the day declared Him to be 
— to come down from the cross, and save Himself and His 
companions in misery ; — that crucified robber, who saw 
Him only in the hour and power of darkness, with the 
Roman soldiers mocking, and the crowds yelling against 
Him, and the Hierarchs and Elders passing by and wagging 
their heads at Him — even that poor robber, overawed to 
conviction by the triumph of His patient majesty, testified 
“ This man hath done nothing amiss,’' and called Him 
“ Lord,” and prayed that He would admit him into His 
kingdom. 

(x.) The Roman Centurion, who had seen Him so 
grievously insulted by the leaders and religious teachers 
and mobs of His own countrymen ; who had watched the 
whole scene until the tortures ceased in death ; who had 
been in command of the rude quaternions of soldiers — felt 
the witness wrung from him, “Truly this was a righteous 
man.” 

(xi.) The very mobs which had so frantically yelled 
against Him seem to have been hushed into awe and silence 
by the sight of a majesty which no ignominy could humili- 
ate, and after His crucifixion returned to Jerusalem smiting 
their breasts with remorseful misgiving. 

Thus, alike the friends and the enemies of Jesus became 
voluntary or unwilling witnesses to His stainless innocence. 
His friends not only testified to His perfectness through 
all the remainder of their days, but demonstrated it by the 


62 


THE LIFE OF LIVES. 


simplicity of their truthful records, and the power of their 
renovated lives. His opponents, with all the will in the 
world to blacken His name and depreciate His character, 
were either constrained to confess His immaculate purity 
of conduct, or in the charges which they brought against 
Him were self-convicted of malice, ignorance, and falsehood. 

Yet all these testimonies, and even the stupendous 
results of His life and death, would not necessarily prove 
His sinless humanity, or His divine prerogatives, had they 
not been corroborated by His own repeated and unvarying 
testimony.* 

He asked His most raging opponents, “ Which of you 
convinceth Me of sin ? And if I say the truth, why do ye 
not believe Me ? ” f 

The keynote of Christ’s inner life was heavenliness. 

“ How sour sweet music is 
When time is broke, and no proportion kept ; 

So is it with the music of men's lives.” 

If the keynote of a man’s life be selfishness, earthliness, 
greed, self-indulgence, his whole life will be full of “ harsh 
chromatic jars.” If we imitate Christ, we shall be enabled 
to join in the perfect diapason, and keep in tune with heaven. 
For us, as for our Saviour, “the path to heaven will then 
lie through heaven, and all the way to heaven be heaven.” 
And this heavenliness of Christ was achieved and exhibited 
in the common round, the trivial task. He never was what 
Romanists call “a religious.” His life bore no resem- 
blance to those of hermits, monks, or ascetics. His reli- 
gion was to finish His Father’s work amid the common 
every-day life of men. In that common every-day life, He 
shifted the centre of gravity of man’s existence from earth 
to heaven. He made it not geocentric , but heleocentric. 
For all who walk in His steps, life is not only ennobled ; it 

* John iv. 34 ; v. 30 ; viii. 29 ; x. 30 ; xiv. 9, 31 ; xv. 6. 27 ; xvi. 33 ; xvii. 
4, 19 ; Matt. xi. 28. 

f John viii 46. Stier, Reden Jesu, Part IV., p. 428. 


THE CLAIMS OF JESUS. 63 

is glorified, it is transfigured. “ Thou shalt show me the 
path of life ; in Thy presence is fulness of joy, and at Thy 
right hand there are pleasures for evermore.” 

Bearing in mind what He was, only consider the weight 
of such utterances as these which follow, and consider how 
— if they had not been so amply justified, both by the short 
years of His life, and by the nineteen centuries which that 
life has influenced, and by the ages which it will still influ- 
ence till Time shall be no more — the fact of uttering them, 
had they not been the perfect truth, would have lowered 
Jesus below the level of all other religious teachers ; would 
have branded Him with the weakness of self-deception and 
the stain of falsehood. 

Consider His seven “ I am’s.” 

1. “ Jesus said unto them, lam the Bread of Life." * 

This He said when the multitude, impressed with 
His words and works, yet asked of Him a sign to authen- 
ticate His claim that the Father had sent Him to bestow 
eternal life by the food which He could give. They chal- 
lenged Him to fulfil the tradition that the Messiah should, 
like Moses, give them manna from Heaven, f They had 
not realised, as even Philo had done, \ that “ the heavenly 
food which feeds the soul ” is the true bread from heaven. 
And when they asked for the bread of God which cometh 
down from heaven, He told them that He Himself was the 
Bread of Life ; in other words, that they who accepted 
Him, by faith lived in Him, would never hunger nor thirst, 
but would have everlasting life. The Apostles showed that 
they had rightly apprehended His revelation when Simon 
Peter said, in the name of them all, “ Lord, to whom shall we 
go ? Thou hast words of eternal life ; and we have believed 
and have come to know that Thou art the Holy On« of God.”§ 

* John vi. 35. f See Lightfoot, Hor. Hebr . ad loc . 

\ Philo, dc Profugis, § 25, quoted by Bp. Westcott ad loc. 

§ Christ also spoke of Himself as the source of the Living Water (John iv. 14. 
vii. 37 . 38 ). 


6 4 


THE LIFE OF LIVES. 


2. “ 1 am the Light of the World." * 

This utterance was another revelation of His divinity, 
for God is Light. Christ was “ the Sun of Righteousness ” 
of whom Malachi had prophesied that He should rise with 
healing in His wings. Just as the Pillar of Fire had illumi- 
nated the darkness of night in the wilderness, so would 
Christ illuminate the darkness of the world, and His true 
disciples should reflect His light. 

3. “ I am the Door of the Fold." f 

In Eastern lands separate flocks are often led at night 
for safety into one large fold. The porter remains to 
watch over the various flocks, and in the morning the 
shepherds come and call out their own sheep. The fold is 
the universal Church — “ the blessed company of all faithful 
people,” and none can enter into that safe and holy fold 
except through Christ. 

4. “Iam the Fair Shepherd!' % 

Christ is the genuine Shepherd of the sheep, and not only 
the “good,” but the “fair” Shepherd — altogether lovely 
as well as tender — who knows His sheep, defends them from 
all danger, and lays down His life for them. He has many 
“folds” in His one Flock, but all the sheep shall be 
gathered at last into the one eternal fold, and become one 
fold under their one Shepherd. This beautiful image more 
than any other haunted the minds of the early Christians, 
as we see from the constant representations of the “ Fair 
Shepherd ” on the walls of the Catacombs. 

5. “ 1 am the Resurrection and the Life."% 

Christ is the Eternal Life shared equally by all who live 
“ in Him.” Whether they be now living on earth, or living 
in the new form of life beyond the phase of earthly death, 
death cannot touch them that have life in Him. 

*Johnviii. 12. The words were immediately suggested by the lighting of 
the great Golden Candelabra in the Court of the Women at the Feast of 
Tabernacles, 
f John x. 7, 9. 


% John x. 11, 14. 


§ John xi. 25. 


65 


THE CLAIMS OF JESUS. 

6 . “ I am the true Vine.” * 

As all the branches of a vine derive their life from union 

with the stem and root, so all believers in Christ share His 
life. As long as they bear the fruit of such union, they 
need indeed to be pruned — as men are by suffering — but 
only that they may become more fruitful. It is only the 
absolutely and hopelessly barren and withered branches 
that are taken away and burned. 

7. “ I am the Way , the Truth , and the Life.” f 

Christ is the sole Way whereby we can pass from death 
to life, and from our evil and perverted self to the Father. 
He is the Eternal Verity in which all semblances are lost. 
He is the Life because He is one with the Living Father, 
apart from whom life is but a living death. 

By all these metaphors — of the Manna, and the living 
Bread, and the Light, and the Door, and the Shepherd, 
and the Vine, and the Way — did Jesus indicate “the 
irrevocable saving significance ” which He knew that His 
life and death possessed for mankind. 

No human lips have ever uttered claims so immense and 
fundamental as these. The fact that Jesus made them 
would brand Him with condemnation had not age after 
age demonstrated their simple and eternal truth. 

Again, consider such invitations as these : 

“ Come unto Me all ye that labour and are heavy-laden, 
and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you, and 
learn of Me, for I am meek and lowly of heart, and ye shall 
find rest unto your souls.” $ 

Or sayings so awful as : 

“ He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father. How 
sayest thou, Show us the Father? ” § 

Or, 

“All things have been delivered unto Me of My Father; 
and no one knoweth who the Son is save the Father; and 

f John xiv. 6. 

§ John xiv. 9. 


* John xv. I. 

% Matt. xi. 28, 29. 


66 


THE LIFE OF LIVES. 


who the Father is save the Son, and he to whomsoever the 
Son willeth to reveal Him.”* 

These utterances are not accidental outcomes of the 
thought of Jesus. Expressed in every variety of form 
they are a fundamental part of all His teaching. He 
accepted worship ; He called Himself the Son of God.f 
In the lowest abyss of the shame, agony, and failure out- 
poured upon His short earthly life — and be it ever remem- 
bered that the man Christ Jesus was a young man even 
when He died — He could yet tell the maddened, sneering 
Sanhedrin, with death for blasphemy staring Him in the 
face as the certain and immediate consequence, that He 
was the Christ, the Son of the Living God, and that here- 
after they should see the Son of Man seated at the right 
hand of God, and coming in the clouds of heaven. 

On the cross itself, nailed there in the uttermost humilia- 
tion of helpless torture and nakedness, with scarcely one 
friend to care for Him among the millions whom He came 
to save, He yet, of His own .authority, flung wide open the 
gates of Paradise to the robber who, in punishment for his 
crimes, was dying by His side. 

And all these claims — so vast, of such eternal import — 
were unhesitatingly repeated and proclaimed, even at the 
peril of life, by those who had seen and known, and whose 
hands had handled ‘the Word of Life. \ 

Now, if such claims, promises, and testimonies were the 
result of monstrous arrogance, or the delusions of pitiful 
hallucination, they would degrade Jesus into the position 
of a self-worshipping fanatic, or an insanely arrogant 
deceiver. Every line which is written of Him, every day 
of the long centuries which have passed since the day of 

* Luke x. 22. Comp. Luke xix. io ; John iii. 35, 36, vi. 37, vii. 37, etc. 
t John ix. 35-38 ; Matt. viii. 2, ix. 18, xiv. 33, etc.; Mark xv. 19 ; Luke 
xxiv. 52. ' 

\ Rom. vi. 23 ; Gal. iii. 13, 22 ; 1 Tim. i. 15 ; Col. i. 14 ; 1 Pet. ii. 24 ; 
John iii. 35, 36, x. 9, xvii. 3 ; Acts xvi. 31, xiii. 38, 39, etc. 


67 


THE CLAIMS OF JESUS. 

His baptism, stamp either alternative as too outrageous 
even for blasphemy to utter. As He said to the hostile 
Jews, His works bore witness for Him. They were the 
seal of attestation affixed to His utterances by His heavenly 
Father, whom they knew not. Though He bore witness to 
Himself, yet was His witness true, for He sought not His 
own glory.* It was His Father who glorified Him, and 
consecrated Him, and bore witness to Him, and He did the 
works of His Father. f The whole ideal and outline of His 
character, as shewn in all that He said and did, stamps His 
own witness concerning Himself with an unanswerable 
force. Liars and deceivers rank among the wickedest of 
mankind ; self-exalting madmen, who claim to be divine, 
are among the most abject of human creatures. It might 
seem as if the earth wquld yawn beneath the feet of any 
one who— by rejecting this repeated and most awfully 
solemn testimony, and in defiance of all truth and reverence 
— dared to relegate the Son of Man to either class. For 
has not every claim He uttered been superabundantly 
justified by the witness of God in the renovation of the 
world wrought through faith in His name? 

The validity of the words and promises of Christ has 
been abundantly justified in matters open to the most 
ordinary tests. He never commissioned His Apostles to 
write, yet, in the midst of what might have seemed to be 
utter and shameful defeat, He calmly said to His little ob- 
scure handful of Galilean disciples that heaven and earth 
would pass away, but His words would not pass away; and 
so it has been4 And when He well knew how near was 
His death of shame, at a feast in the petty Judaean village 
of Bethany, He promised to Mary’s act of fidelity an im- 
mortal memory over the whole habitable earth ; and to 
this day, in every region of the habitable earth, that deed 
is still proclaimed.! 

* John viii. 50-54. 

% Matt. xxiv. 35. 


f John xii. 28, xiv. 13, xvii. 4, etc. 
§ Matt. xxvi. 13. 


68 


THE LIFE OF LIVES. 


There are, as Kant wrote, two things which move and 
uplift and overawe the soul, more than all else of which, by 
our senses and intellect, we can become cognisant — “ the 
starry heavens above, and the moral law within.” But to 
these two things, it has been rightly said, we must add a 
third, yet more sublime, namely, the realisation, the fulfil- 
ment, the perfect exhibition of that “ moral law within ” in 
the life of One who was exalted far above all heavens, yet 
lived in a tent like ours, and of the same material — the man 
Christ Jesus. “Sin is a failure, and perversity an apostasy. 
He alone conquered sin. In Him alone there was no 
sin.” 

Yes ! God the Father, the Almighty, the Maker of 
Heaven and Earth, has, in all the consequences achieved by 
Christ in all the world, stamped His seal of Divine attesta- 
tion to the mission of His Son Jesus. God has “ in mani- 
fold figures indicated the unique, irrevocable, saving signifi- 
cance which He knew His preaching to have for men.” * 
The comment upon that saving significance is written 
broad and large over all the subsequent destinies of man- 
kind. Jesus taught but for one or two short years, moving 
about among the humble peasants of despised Galilee ; yet 
He “ became the creator of a new and higher Kosmos, the 
duration of which is to be reckoned by millenniums and the 
extent of which is to be conterminous with the whole sur- 
face of the earth. ”f “The proof of the grace poured out 
in His life,” \ says Origen, “ is this— that, after a brief space 
of time, the whole world has been filled with His teaching 
and the faith of His filial love.” In vain were Philo and 
Josephus silent respecting Him ; in vain did Tacitus dismiss 
Christianity as an “ exitiabilis superstitio ,” to be classed 
with all things “ atrocia aut pudenda” ;% in vain did Pliny 
characterise it as “ superstitio prava et immodica ; ” || in vain 

* Wendt, The Teaching of Jesus , ii. 289. f Keim. 

x Orig. De Princ. iv. 5. § Tac. Ann. xv. 14. 

]| Plin. Epp. 10, 97, 98. 


THE CLAIMS OF JESUS. 69 

did Celsus accumulate his lying slanders ; * in vain did 
Suetonius describe Christians as people of a new and ma- 
lefic superstition ; f in vain did Talmudic and mediaeval 
Judaism heap upon Jesus and those who believed on Him 
their inextinguishable hatred and monstrous calumnies ; \ 
in vain did the Middle Ages produce the book De Tribus 
Impostoribus ; in vain did Paulus, and Strauss, and Renan, 
and many more in modern days strive to undermine our 
faith with their naturalistic explanations, and mythic 
theories, and historic or philosophic reconstructions — in 
spite of all these, Christus vincit , Christus regnat , Christus 
imperat ; and we still pray with perfect faith, “ Christus ab 
cmni malo plebem suam defendat ! ” 

♦See Orig. c. Cels, i, 28, and passim. Comp. Justin. Dial. 10, 17, 28. 

\ See Eisemenger Entd. Judenth. Schottgen. Hor. Hebr. ii. 693. Wagen- 
seil, Tela ignea Salanae. 

fSuet. Nero. 16. 


CHAPTER VII. 


THE HUMAN EDUCATION OF JESUS. 

“ Hearken unto me, ye holy children, and bud forth as a rose growing 
by the brook of the field ; and give ye a sweet savour as frankincense, 
and flourish as a lily, and send forth a smell, and sing a song of praise." 
— Ecclus. xxxix. 13, 14. 

rd < 5 e Trcudiov 7}v^ave, “ The Little Child grew.” — Luke ii. 40. 

There is in the Evangelists a deep and holy reserve. 
What they did not know they would not relate. St. Mat- 
thew had only become a disciple when Christ called him 
from the place of toll beside the Lake of Galilee in Caper- 
naum. St. Mark was probably still a youth at the time of 
the Crucifixion. He had not been a personal witness of 
the scenes of the ministry, and though he derived his 
information from St. Peter, yet St. Peter first met Jesus at 
the Baptism of John. St. Luke may not have been con- 
verted till after the death of Christ ; and he frankly tells us 
that, though he classed himself among those who “from 
the beginning were the eye-witnesses and ministers of the 
word,” he based his Gospel on what he had ascertained 
from “ having traced the course of all things accurately 
from the first.” St. John did not mean his Gospel for a 
complete record ; he disavows the intention of recording 
“ many other things which Jesus did.” His obvious pur- 
pose was to complete the narratives of his predecessors, to 
supplement what they had left unrecorded of the Judaean 
ministry, and to present the life and teaching of the Lord 
Jesus under that more immediately spiritual aspect, which, 
until years of eventful issue had passed by, could not have 
been adequately understood. 


70 


HUMAN EDUCATION OF JESUS. 71 

The only persons who could fully have narrated the early 
years of Jesus were His mother, Mary, and Joseph, and 
those who are called “ His brethren.” But Mary chose to 
remain silent.* Conscious of overwhelming revelations, 
she “ kept all these things and pondered them in her heart.” 
Joseph, her husband, seems to have died while Jesus was 
yet a boy. The “ brethren ” — whatever may have been the 
exact relation in which they stood to Jesus — were not at 
first among the number of his avowed disciples, and only 
became so after His resurrection. Further, we may observe 
that the importance attached to childhood and youth in 
many modern records was a thing unknown to antiquity, 
and that stories of early years are very rarely, or never, 
mentioned in ancient biographies. 

St. Matthew narrates the circumstances of the Virgin- 
birth of Christ. He tells us of the visit of the Magi ; the 
massacre of the innocents at Bethlehem ; the flight into 
Egypt ; and the reason why Joseph — abandoning all 
thoughts of settling in Judaea under the suspicious and 
sanguinary rule of Archelaus — retired to Nazareth, in Gali- 
lee. Then, passing over some thirty years of the Saviour’s 
life, he proceeds at once to describe the preaching of John 
the Baptist. 

St. Mark , in his brief and vivid Gospel, written for 
Roman readers, f plunges at once “ in medias res” and only 
professes to give an account of the ministry, which was 
inaugurated by the vision and descent of the Holy Spirit 
upon Jesus when John was baptising. All the light which 
he throws on the childhood, youth, and early manhood of 
Jesus, is seen (as well as pointed out later) in the flash of a 
single casual but revealing word. 

*1 have not, in this book, entered into questions of date. Our era Anno 
Domini (a. u. c. 754) was fixed by the Abbot Dionysius Exiguus in A. D. 525. 
An older tradition fixed the Birth of Christ a. u. C. 750, four years earlier. The 
question is unsettled, and will probably remain so. 

f See such notices as those in Mark x. 12, xii. 42, xv. 1. 


72 


THE LIFE OF LIVES. 


St. John , writing at the close of the first century, when 
the Synoptic Gospels, and others less sacred, were already 
in the hands of Christians, takes the same starting-point as 
the three Synoptists. He does not lift the curtain for us, 
though he probably knew more about the early years of 
Jesus than the other Evangelists, for he was, by birth, a 
nephew of the Virgin, and had been as a son to her, and 
— by the tender care of Jesus for His mother — had taken 
her in her hour of anguish to his own home.* 

In the silence of the New Testament on the earlier years 
of Jesus, we see the over-ruling restraint of a Divine Provi- 
dence. It was not intended that the Gospels should 
gratify a biographical curiosity ; they had a far diviner pur- 
pose. Had all been detailed, St. John says, “ I suppose 
that even the world itself would not contain the books 
that should be written.” As it is, the Gospels have been 
the parents of a literature ever increasing in extent, and 
already immeasurably vast. There are cases in which 
silence becomes the most powerful eloquence, and some- 
thing of the significance of that silence we may see when 
we come to speak of Christ’s unrecorded years. 

St. Luke , a Greek-speaking convert of Asiatic origin, was 
undoubtedly familiar with Ephesus, which he had visited 
among the companions of St. Paul ; and if the tradition be 
true that the Virgin died at Ephesus, f he may have known 

* It does not fall within my scope, in this book, to enter for the ten thou- 
sandth time into the question of the genuineness and authenticity of the Fourth 
Gospel. We know at any rate that as early as the day of Tatian ( circ . a. d. 170) 
it had taken its place as one of the Four Gospels received by the whole Church; 
and that (in Orat. ad Graecos 13) Tatian (a pupil of Justin Martyr) quotes John 
i. 5 as sacred Scripture. For the rest I must content myself with referring to 
the many decisive proofs which have of late years been accumulated by the 
learned; and especially to the decisive arguments of Bishop Westcott in the 
Speaker’s Commentary. 

\ Epiph. Haer. 78. Her tomb was shown at Ephesus (see Cone. Eph. Labbe 
iii. 574a.) Another tradition is that she died at Jerusalem, and that her 
latter years were mainly spent in the Ccenaculum, the upper chamber of the 
Last Supper. 


HUMAN EDUCATION OF JESUS. 73 

her there, and have learnt from her lips the few details 
about the infancy of Christ, which, in their ineffable sweet- 
ness, seem stamped with the tender grace of a mother’s 
reminiscences. 

But among the minor differences between the Gospels, 
they do not differ in the least in the picture and impression 
of Jesus which they leave upon our minds. The method 
of St. John, and the details which he furnishes, diverge in 
many particulars from the method and details of the 
Synoptists, but we see on every page alike one and 
the same Divine Lord. 

It is from St. Luke that we learn in a single sentence all 
that we know of the Divine Infancy. It is that “ the Child 
grew and waxed strong, becoming full of wisdom, and the 
grace of God was upon Him.”* 

It is but a single sentence, but it is inestimably precious. 
It illustrates the truth of the perfect humanity of Jesus. 
It shows us that Christ was not only “ truly God ” (as was 
finally declared by the decision of the Council of Nice), but 
that also He was (as the Council of Constantinople decided) 
“ perfectly (reXecos) man.” It is a bulwark against the 
Apollinarianism which denies the full humanity of Christ, 
a heresy more common in these days, and quite as danger- 
ous as the Arianism which denies His divinity. It shows 
us the reality of that kenosis , that “ emptying Himself” of 
His glory, and of the divine attributes of Omnipotence and 
Omniscience, of which St. Paul speaks, f It shows us that 
Jesus grew up simply as a human child, after the common 
way of all men (as Justin Martyr says), J though the grace 
of God was upon Him ; and that His advance in wisdom 
was as normal as His growth in strength and stature. It 
pictures to us a natural but holy childhood, “ like the 

* Luke ii 40. The word tt Xjjpovpevov implies, of course, continuous advance, 
like the word npoeicoKTe in Luke ii. 52. 

f Phil. ii. 7. encvuaev eavrdv. 

\ Just. Mart. Dial. c. Tryph. 88. 


74 


THE LIFE OF LIVES. 


flower of roses in the spring of the year, and as lilies by the 
water courses.” 

But St. Luke — and there can be little doubt that he 
heard the story from the lips of the Virgin, whether at 
Jerusalem or at Ephesus — alone preserves for us a single 
anecdote of the boyhood of Jesus, which is full of beauty 
and preciousness. 

Twelve silent years glided by — perhaps the twelfth had 
been completed — and Jesus was considered old enough to 
accompany His parents to the Paschal Feast.* Of the 
eight stages into which the Jews divided childhood and 
boyhood, He had now reached the last. He was a bachur y 
u a full-grown boy.” In Rabbinic phraseology, He was no 
longer animated by the nephesh , or “ natural life,” but by 
the ruach or “ spirit ” ; that is, as we should express it, He 
had attained to years of discretion — for the boys develop 
much more rapidly in the East than in our Northern cli- 
mate. At this age, by the rule of tradition, a boy would 
begin to learn a trade for his own maintenance, and to 
wear “ phylacteries ” ( tephillin ) after presentation by his 
father in the synagogue on the Shabbath Tephilin. It is, 
however, highly uncertain whether our Lord ever wore, on 
arm and forehead, these little leather receptacles for texts, 
or whether they were common among “ the men of the 
people ” — the amharatzim of Galilee. We have no refer- 
ence to them in the Gospels, except in Christ’s condemna- 
tion of the Pharisees for the vain ostentation with which 
they made them unusually broad. 

As Jesus was now, or shortly afterwards became, “ a son 
of the Covenant ” (Bar mitzvah ), or “ a son of the Law ” 
(Benhattorah), He had already received a considerable part 
of His early education. What were the most marked 
features in the training of a Jewish boy of that day? 

The Jews were honourably distinguished by the care 
they took in the education of their children. They re- 

*Comp. Jos. A nit. ii. 9, § 6. 


HUMAN EDUCATION OF JESUS. 75 

garded their schools as “ vineyards.” There is a story in 
the Talmud how once there had been a long and painful 
drought, and all the Chief Priests and Rabbis assembled 
before the people to pray for rain. They prayed, and 
prayed, but no rain fell. Then rose up one common-look- 
ing man, and prayed, and instantly the heavens grew black 
Avith clouds, and the rain fell abundantly. “ Who art thou,” 
they asked in astonishment, “that thy prayer alone should 
have prevailed?” And he answered, “ I am a teacher of 
little children ”* 

It is probable that our Lord grew up in the habitual use 
of two languages — Aramaic and Greek. Aramaic, a dia- 
lect of Hebrew, was at that time the current language of 
Galilee. A great part of Palestine was bilingual, so that 
there can be no doubt that Jesus also learnt to speak Greek, 
for He could converse with the Centurion, and the Syro- 
Phcenician woman, and Pilate, and others, without any inter- 
preter. He was of course familiar with the Old Testament 
in the original Hebrew.f Since our Lord’s brethren, James 
and Jude, show in their Epistles that they were well ac- 
quainted with the Apocrypha, we may be sure that our 
Lord was also. This would be decisively proved by the 
resemblance of Matt, xxiii. 3 7 to 2 Esdras i. 30-33, if it 
were not nearly certain that much of 2 Esdras is inter- 
polated by a Christian writer. 

The teaching of children was, however, mainly confined 
to the Mosaic and Levitic Law. “ I lay aside all the trade 
of the world,” said R. Nehorai, “ and teach my son only 
the Law ; for its reward is enjoyed in this world, and its 

* See the articles on “Kinder” “ Unterricht” in Winer, Realworter- 
buch; Diestel, s.v. Unterricht , in Schenkel’s BibeULexicon ; Hamburger, 
s. vv. Schuler , Lehrer , Schule , Mitzwa. Kitto ,Cyclopaed.,s.v. Education; Dean 
Plumptre in Smith’s Diet, of the Bible , and Schurer, Div . ii. i, 323-326 : 
Herzfeld, Gesch. d. Volkes Israel , iii. 266-268, etc. 

f As seems to be proved by the quotations from the original. Mark xii. 
29, 30 ; Luke xxi. 37 ; Matt, xxvii. 46. The knowledge of Hebrew seems to 
be implied by Matt. v. 22. 


76 


THE LIFE OF LIVES. 


capital remains for the world to come.”* * * § But the teach- 
ing of the Law was mainly an exercise of the memory. 
The commands of the Law were iterated and reiterated, so 
that the Rabbinic word for “ to teach ” ( shanah ) means 
“ to repeat,” and the word for “ teaching ” is Mishnah 
(“ repetition ”). The highest praise for a pupil was to be 
“ like a well, lined with lime, which loses not one drop.” f 
The main effort, then, was merely to train the memory. 
We do full justice to the importance which the Jews 
attached to education, yet we cannot but admit that their 
views of education were too narrow. We cannot concede 
to Josephus that “the Jews by their system of teaching, 
which combined the teaching of the Law with the practice 
of morals, surpassed the foremost of the Greeks, since they 
united the unquestioning obedience of the Spartans with 
the theoretic instruction of the Athenians.” \ Jewish boys 
were taught the Law, as Philo says, by their parents and 
teachers, from their very swaddling clothes ; but, unhap- 
pily, the current conception of the Law had been overlaid 
with deplorable perversions, and was radically erroneous 
in important particulars. 

There can be little doubt that Jesus attended the school 
which was attached to the synagogue of Nazareth, and that, 
as He “was continually growing in wisdom,” He had from 
the first been carefully trained by His mother and Joseph. 
That training also was all-but-exclusively Scriptural. The 
Kindergarten of Jewish children — and the Jews sometimes 
called their schools “ gardens ” — was the Beth Hassepher , 
or “ House of the Book ” ; and it was only when a child 
had been well grounded in “the Book ” that he passed to 
the Beth Hammidrash , or secondary school. § 

* Peak , i. i. 

f Avoth. ii. 8 ; Gfrorer, Jahrh. des Heils , i.; Hamburger, s.v. Lehrhaus. 

X Jos. c. Ap. ii. 16, 17. Compare Antt. iv. 8, 12 ; Philo, Leg. ad Caium. 36. 

§ Schools for children are said to have been founded throughout Palestine a 
century earlier by Simeon ben Shetach (Jer. Kethouboth , viii. 14) ; and to have 


HUMAN EDUCATION OF JESUS. 77 

By that time a boy had been taught to read, and some- 
times (though more rarely) to write ; to keep the Sabbath ; 
and to fast on the Day of Atonement. A little later he 
would be taught to repeat the Shema and the Shemoneh 
Ezreh. The Shema — or “ Hear, O Israel ! ” — consisted of 
the sections Deut. vi. 4-9, xi. 13-21 ; Num. xv. 37-41, 
with various benedictions ( Berachoth ) which were attached 
to them. The Shemoneh Ezreh consisted of “ Eighteen 
Blessings,” mostly expressed in the words of Scripture, and 
beginning with the words “ Blessed art Thou, O Lord.”* 

To this training was added all that a child learnt almost 
mechanically from his constant Sabbath-attendances at the 
synagogue, which was meant for instruction as well as for 
worship. How familiar must Christ have been with that 
village Beth Tephilla (House of Prayer) or Beth Hakkeneseth 
(House of Assembly), as He sat among the other boys of 
Nazareth in the back seats, behind the chief worshippers ! 
How deeply must He have taken in the divine meaning 
alike of the Parashoth , or 154 sections of the Law, by 
which the Pentateuch was read through in three years ; and 
also of the Haphtaroth , or sections of the Prophets, the 
reading of which had been introduced in the days of the 
fierce persecution by Antiochus Epiphanes, when the read- 
ing of the Law was punished with death. Not only were 
the passages read by the appointed person — who might 
even be a boy — in the original Hebrew, but they were 
translated, paragraph after paragraph, into the Aramaic by 
the Methurgeman, or interpreter. How deep must have 
been the expectant interest with which the child Jesus saw 
the Rosh Hakkeneseth , or “ Ruler of the Synagogue,” re- 
ceive from the hand of his clerk ( Chazzan ) the roll of the 
Law, or of the Prophets, and appoint the reader, who took 

been extended by the order of the High Priest, Jesus Bar Gamala (Bab. 
Bavabathra f. 21, i). 

*For full information, see Hamburger, Real-Encycl. II. s.v. Schemone - 
Esre. 


78 


THE LIFE OF LIVES. 


his stand behind the elevated Bema , and read the lesson, 
and then sat down to deliver the explanation or sermon 
(. Derashah :). With what a thrill of heart must He have 
heard the trumpets ( Shopharoth ) blown at the beginning of 
the new year and on the solemn feast days. 

Thus the human training of the Christ Child involved a 
thorough acquaintance with the letter of the Holy Scrip- 
tures, which rose infinitely above the wooden literalism, the 
fantastic expansions, the evasive manipulations of the cur- 
rent exegesis. The right apprehension of Holy Writ came 
to Him from no human teacher, but from His own pure 
spirit, and His union with that Father of Lights with whom 
is no variableness nor shadow cast by turning. Yet, early 
as He may have seen through the hollowness of the inter- 
pretations with which Scripture had been overlaid by the 
current tendencies of His day, we are quite sure that He 
was utterly unlike the terrible, ungovernable child of the 
Apocryphal fictions. Towards all His earthly teachers we 
are sure that He exhibited that sweet lowliness of heart 
which, as He grew in wisdom and stature, caused Him to 
advance also in favour with God and man. 

The Son of Sirach asks : “ How can he get wisdom that 
holdeth the plough, that driveth oxen — and whose talk is 
of bullocks ... so every carpenter and workmaster that 
laboureth night and day? All these trust to their hands ; 
they shall not be sought for in public counsel, . . They 
shall not understand the covenant of judgment, and 
where parables are they shall not be found.” * Neverthe- 
less, however simple and elementary may have been the 
training which Jesus received from the Mikredardike, or 

teachers of children,” in the local synagogue-school, so 
deep was His insight into the Scriptures — so far deeper 
than that derived from the traditions of the Scribes — that 
when Rabbis and Jerusalemite Pharisees encountered Him 
in lordly opposition, He could at once refute their insolent 

* Ecclus. xxxviii. 24-34. 


HUMAN EDUCATION OF JESUS. 79 

tone of superiority by His searching questions, “ Have ye 
never read ?"* We observe, too, that whereas the system 
of Jewish education was almost exclusively occupied with the 
study of the Law, our Lord reverts far more frequently to 
the great Prophets of Israel, and sets mercy far above sac- 
rifice. 

It may be worth while to emphasise in passing the 
extreme simplicity of the worship in which during all His life 
the Saviour of mankind, Sabbath after Sabbath, was wont 
to take His part. The visits to the Temple were few and 
exceptional, and all His life long He mainly worshipped in 
the synagogues, which were as bare and as devoid of all 
ritual, symbolism, or outward gorgeousness as the barest 
Dissenting chapel. The synagogues were rooms, of which 
the end usually pointed to Jerusalem (the Kibleh , or con- 
secrated direction of Jewish worship, Dan. vi. 10). On one 
side sat the men ; on the other the veiled women. Almost 
the only piece of furniture in them was the Ark ( Tebhah ) of 
painted wood, which contained the Law ( Thor ah') and the 
rolls ( Tephilloth ) of the Prophets. On one side was a Bema 
(the Jews borrowed the name from the Greeks) for the 
reader and preacher, and the “ chief seats ” of the “ Ruler 
of the Synagogue ” and the Elders ( Zekenim ). The only 
servants of the synagogue, in its severe simplicity, were the 
clerk ( Chazzan ), the verger ( Skeliach ), and the deacons 
(Parnasim, or shepherds). It is clear therefore that rites 
and ceremonies — in favour of which neither Christ nor His 
Apostles uttered a single word — were needless for the most 
intense and exalted worship which the world has ever seen. 
The only rubric which the New Testament contains is, 
“ Let all things be done decently and in order.” 

* Luke iv. 17 ; Matt. v. 18, xii. 3, xiii. 52, xix. 4, xxi. 16, 42, xxii. 31. The 
Rabbis hardly regarded a country education as worth their notice (Mark vi. 2 { 
Joh* vi. 42, vii. 15). 


CHAPTER VIII. 


THE FIRST ANECDOTE. 

Iijoovg 6 naig. — Luke ii. 43. 

2 Macc. ii. 22. “ The Temple, renowned all the world over." 

“ Take notice that His doing nothing wonderful was itself a kind of 
wonder. As there was power in His actions, so is there power in His 
silence, in His inactivity, in His retirement." — St. Bonaventura. 

The other Evangelists give us a passing glimpse of the 
outer circumstances of the infancy of Jesus, and then pass 
on to His full manhood. 

St. Luke alone, as we have seen, gives us the notice 
respecting Him — brief, but inestimably precious — when 
He was “ a weaned child.” He also furnishes us with “ one 
solitary floweret out of the enclosed garden of the thirty 
years, plucked precisely there where the swollen bud, at a 
distinctive crisis, bursts into flower.” * 

Not before the twelfth year, and, as a rule, not till after 
its completion, f was a boy required to enter into the full 
obedience of an Israelite, and to attend the Passover. We 
can imagine how the heart of Jesus must have beat with 
earnest joy, as, with His parents and the many pilgrims 
from Nazareth who would attend the Feast, He made His 
way down the narrow valley from the summit of His native 
hill. He was doubtless clad in the bright-coloured robes of 
an Eastern boy — in red caftan, and gay tunic, girded with 
an embroidered sash, and covered, perhaps, with a loose 

* Stier, v. 18. 

t Pirqe Avdth. v. 21. “At thirteen years of age a boy becomes bound to 
observe the (613) precepts of the Law." 

80 


THE FIRST ANECDOTE. 


81 


outer jacket of white or blue. What a rush of new associa- 
tions would sweep through His soul as He traversed those 
eighty miles between Nazareth and Jerusalem, and saw the 
scenes which were indelibly associated in His mind with 
memories of Sisera and Barak, of Elijah and Elisha, of 
Joshua and Saul, at Kishon, and Shunem, and Gilboa ! 
He probably passed between Ebal and Gerizin, and by 
Jacob’s Well, and so by Shiloh and Bethel to the Holy 
City. How often must the thought have been in His 
mind, “ Our feet shall stand in Thy courts, O Jerusalem ! ” 
And when the city glittered before Him on its rocky water- 
shed between the Jordan and the sea, with its three hills of 
Zion, Moriah, and Acra, surrounded by walls and stately 
towers — when He saw the Temple, with its white marble, 
and gilded pinnacles, flaming in the eastern sunlight like a 
mountain of snow and gold, and rising before Him, terrace 
above terrace — the words of the Psalmist would almost 
inevitably be in His mind, “ Jerusalem is built as a city which 
is at unity with itself. For thither the tribes go up, even 
the tribes of the Lord, for a testimony unto Israel, to give 
thanks unto the name of the Lord.” * 

Or, “ Walk about Zion, and go round about her, and tell 
the towers thereof. Mark well her bulwarks, consider her 
palaces, that ye may tell them that come after.” f The 
Psalms known as the “Songs of Degrees,” J were often 
sung by the pilgrims as they approached Jerusalem, as they 
had been — according to tradition — by the exiles who 
returned with Ezra. We can imagine the enthusiasm with 
which they would join in such words as : 

“ Peace be within thy walls, and plenteousness within 
thy palaces ! 

“ For my brethren and companions’ sakes, I will wish 
thee prosperity. 

*Ps. cxxii. 4. fPs. xlviii. 13. 

X Pss. cxx.-cxxxiv. They should properly be called “Songs of Ascents,” 
or “ of the Goings Up.” 


82 


THE LIFE OF LIVES. 


“ Yea, because of the House of the Lord our God I will 
seek to do thee good. * * * § 

Amid the rose-gardens and pleasances which surrounded 
Jerusalem, f and under the umbrageous multitudes of 
palms and olives, and figs and cedars, and chestnut trees, 
would have been scattered the temporary booths of some 
of the two million pilgrims who flocked to the city for the 
great yearly feast from every region of the civilised globe. 
When the pilgrims from Nazareth had passed along the 
Valleys of Jehoshaphat and Hinnom, the roads and the 
streets through which they made their way to the Temple 
must have been densely thronged with ever-increasing 
crowds. 

Jesus would pass beneath those colossal substructions 
towering up some 600 feet above His head, and built of 
vast blocks of stones, still visible, of which some are 20 feet 
in length and 4 feet in height.;); Perhaps he crossed the 
royal bridge over the Valley of the Tyropceon. And at 
last — at last — He would enter “the Mountain of the 
House ”§ by one of the five gates. If He entered by the 
gate called Shushan, or “ the Lily Gate,” He would see 
“ Solomon’s Porch ” stretching to right and left, and would 
stand on the many-coloured pavement of the court of that 
gorgeous Herodian Temple which was one of the wonders 
of the world. The scene was doubtless one of extraordi- 
nary animation, yet it must have presented many repulsive 
features which it required an intense enthusiasm to over- 
look. For the colonnades were thronged with the vendors 
of sheep and oxen for sacrifice, including thousands of 
Paschal lambs. Here were seated the sellers of the doves, 
for the offerings of the poor, with their crowded wicker 

*Ps. cxxii. 7-9. 

f An ancient rose-garden is mentioned ( Baba Kama , 82, 1), and there were 
the gardens of Solomon (2 Kings xxv. 4 ; Neh. iii. 15 ; Eccl. ii. 5, etc.). 

X On the Temple, see Josephus B.J. v. 2, and plate in Carr’s St. Matthew. 

§ rrnn nn Comp. 1 Macc. xiii. 52. 


THE FIRST ANECDOTE. 


83 


baskets. Here sat and chaffered the two classes of money- 
changers — those who gave smaller change for gold and 
silver,* and those who took foreign money, with its heathen 
emblems and inscriptions, in exchange for the Jewish 
money, which could alone be used for Temple purposes.f 
These men drove hard bargains in noisy and often nefari- 
ous traffic. At the south end of this huge Court of the 
Gentiles was the triple royal colonnade — known as “ Solo- 
mon’s Porch ” — which was reserved for more quiet gather- 
ings. This Forecourt of the Gentiles was marked off from 
the more sacred enclosures by the double barriers of the 
Soreg and the Chel (^n). Through one of the openings of 
the Soreg Jesus would climb the fourteen steps to the Chel, 
on which were marble tablets with inscriptions in Greek 
and Latin forbidding any Gentiles to proceed a step farther 
on pain of death.;]: Mounting the steps of a terrace which 
towered sixty feet above the Court of the Gentiles, Jesus 
would pass, perhaps, through “ the Beautiful Gate ” and 
gaze at the Court of the Women, and the Court of the 
Israelites. In the latter stood the Lishcath Hag-gazzith , or 
“ Hall of Square Stones,” to the southeast of the inner 
forecourt, in which perhaps at that time the Sanhedrin 
held its meetings. Here, too, was the Treasury, outside of 
which were the thirteen chests with trumpet-shaped open- 

* KoXkv^LCTal, John ii. 15. See Matt. xxi. 12; Mark xi. 15; Luke 
xix. 45. 

\ nepfiaTLGTal, John ii. 14; Josephus B. J. vi. 2, 4; Philo, Opp. ii. 577. 
Comp. Acts xxi. 28. 

X One of these marble tablets, which must have been seen by Christ Himself, 
was discovered by Mons. Clermont Ganneau built into the wall of a Moham- 
medan house at Jerusalem. It is now in one of the mosques in Constantinople. 
For the actual inscription see Rev. Archhlogique,y.^\\\. pi. x. ; Schurer, i. 266. 
M. Clermont Ganneau gave an account of its discovery in the Athenceiim of 
June 10, 1871. The inscription is word for word as given by Josephus, except 
that he, with his usual complaisance to the Romans, omits the threatened 
penalty of death to any intruder beyond the dpv<paKToc which ran round the 
temple (lepov) and enclosure (tt epifioAfy (Besant, Twenty-One Years of Work , p. 
167). 


THE LIFE OF LIVES. 


84 

ings ( Shopharoth ) * * * § into which alike the rich and the poor 
cast their Temple-offerings. 

Twelve or fifteen steps higher still was the Court of the 
Priests, on the northwest end of which, on a platform 
ascended by twelve more steps, rose in white marble “ the 
joy of the whole earth, the Temple of the Great King.”f 
Its doors were open, but the interior was concealed from 
vulgar gaze by curtains of Babylonian purple. Over its 
gilded portico was wreathed the huge Vine with its bunches 
of golden grapes. On its topmost roof were the gilded 
spikes (“ scare-ravens ”) to keep birds from settling on it. 
Within its mysterious recesses was that awful “ Holy of 
Holies ” which was trodden by no human foot save that of 
the High Priest when he sprinkled the blood of the sacri- 
fice, on the great Day of Atonement, towards the place 
where once had stood the Ark of the Covenant, over- 
shadowed by the outspread wings of the golden Cherubim. :f 
And this was the one most hallowed spot of all the world, 
towards which, for centuries, every Jew had turned his eyes 
when he knelt down to pray to the God of his Fathers. § 

All was as yet entirely new to the Holy Boy, and we can 
but imagine with what interest He — the unknown heir of 
David’s line — would have listened to the nine trumpet- 
blasts which announced the morning and evening sacrifice, 

* Yoma , f. 55, 2. 

f We cannot always be certain of the exactness of the details. 

X The Ark had disappeared since the Captivity. Nothing was now to be 
seen in the Holiest Place but the “ Stone of the Foundation” ( Yoma , f. 53, 2), 
which was supposed to be the centre of the world ( cf . Ezek. v. 5, and see Her- 
shon, Talm. Miscellany , p. 300). Pompey, when he forced his way into the 
Holiest, expecting to find some image of an animal which the Gentiles ignor- 
antly fancied that the Jews worshipped, was amazed to find “ vacua omnia. ” 
According to Yoma , f. 21, 2, the five things wanting to the second Temple 
were : 1. The Ark. 2. The Holy Fire. 3. The Shechinah. 4. The Spirit 

of Prophecy. 5. The Urim and Thummim. These five missing things were 
supposed to be indicated by the omission of n ( = 5 ) in the word “and 

I will be glorified,” in Hag. i. 8. 

§ Dan. vi. 10. 


THE FIRST ANECDOTE. 85 

and to the sacred songs and solemn litanies of the singers, 
the sons of Asaph, Heman, and Jeduthun, with their silver 
trumpets, and harps, and cymbals. He must have watched 
the army of priests in their turbans and white robes and 
girdles of purple, and blue, and scarlet, hurrying about the 
Court of the Priests with their bare feet, and busy from 
morn till dewy eve in roasting and seething the oxen, 
and lambs, and kids, and ever washing the gold and silver 
vessels of the Sanctuary. He would see for the first time 
the huge altar of burnt-offering standing before the eastern 
front of the Temple. It was the hugest in the world, forty- 
eight feet square at the base, and diminishing by stages to 
its summit. It was built of unhewn stones, untouched by 
any human tool. It was also approached by an ascent of 
unhewn stones, and on its broad summit flamed, day and 
night, the perpetual fire. Beyond it was the great brazen 
laver in which the priests washed their hands and feet.* In 
this Court the victims were slaughtered, and there were 
pillars to which their carcasses were hung, and marble 
tables on which they were skinned and the entrails washed. 

To the ordinary eye this Court must often have looked like 
one huge slaughter-house, in which amid the wreaths of 
curling smoke were heard the sound of perpetual prayers 
and formularies, the bleating of sheep, and the lowing of 
oxen. But it would seem transfigured to eyes that gazed 
on it with holy enthusiasm. Jesus could only have seen it 
from the Court of the Israelites ; for, under ordinary 
circumstances, none but the priestly ministers were allowed 
to enter into its actual precincts. “ Whoever has not seen 
Herod’s Temple,” says the Talmud, “has never seen a 
beautiful structure in his life. How did Herod build it? 
Ravah replied, ‘ With white and green marble, so that it 
appeared in the distance like waves of the sea.’” f 

* Baba Bathra , f. 3, 2. “ The Mount of the Temple was 500 yards square.” 

Middot h, ch. 2. 

f Baba Bathra , f. 4, 1. See, for full details, Schtirer, i. 280. 


86 


THE LIFE OF LIVES. 


But in the Court below, the full stream of the varied life 
of Judaism must have passed before His eyes. Here He 
would have seen the High Priest Hanan (or Annas), son of 
Seth, before whom He was destined to stand as a prisoner. * 
He would have seen too, the “Captain of the Temple” 
(the Ish har hab-Bith, or “ Man of the Mountain of the 
House ”), with his little army of subordinate Levites, in their 
peaked caps, and with the pockets which held their Law 
books. Mingled among the crowd would be solemn white- 
robed Essenes ; Pharisees with their broad phylacteries; 
Herodian courtiers in their gorgeous clothing ; Nazarites 
with their long hair ; beggars — blind and lame — seated 
before the two great bronze valves of the Gate Beautiful ; 
and here and there, perhaps, in the Court of the Gentiles,, 
some Roman soldier in his armour, looking round him 
with scornful curiosity, and answering with looks of disdain 
the scowls of hatred sometimes thrown upon him. At 
sunset Jesus would perhaps stop to witness the closing of 
the great bronze gate on the east of the Court of the 
Gentiles, so heavy that it took twenty men to move it,f 
though, sixty years later, before the destruction of the 
Temple, it was said to have opened of its own accord, while 
Voices, as of departing Deities, where heard to wail in tones 
of awful warning, “Let us depart hence ! ” \ 

And then, at evening, in some little wattled booth out- 
side the city, among the Galilean pilgrims, or in the humble 
house of some Galilean friends in Jerusalem, the male mem- 
bers of the Holy Family — although not with their loins 
girded, their staves in their hands, their shoes on their feet, 
as the ancient custom was — would have eaten the Paschal 
meal rejoicing, with hymns and benedictions, and would 

* He was High Priest A. d. 6-15. At later visits Jesus may have seen, in 
the rapidly changing Hierarchy, Ishmael ben Phabi (A. d. 15, 16) ; Eleazar, 
son of Annas (a. d. 16, 17) ; Simon ben Kamhith (a. d. 17, 18) ; and Joseph 
Caiaphas (A. D. 18-36). 

\ Josephus B. J. vi. 5, 3. 


X Tac. Hist. v. 13. 


THE FIRST ANECDOTE. 87 

drink the cups of blessing and thanksgiving which the 
father of the family passed round. 

So the Feast ended, with its tumult of new associations. 
And then, after this chief event in the whole year, the 
booths were broken up, the simple belongings of the pil- 
grims were packed on the backs of asses and camels, and in 
various groups, the hundreds of thousands of pilgrims, 
amid psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, began to wend 
their way back to their own quiet homes. 

How easy it would be, in such a scene of bustle, to lose 
sight of one young boy.* At first, Joseph and Mary did 
not notice His absence, feeling no doubt assured that, as 
He must have known the hour at which the caravan would 
start, He must be safe and happy amid some group of the 
rejoicing relatives and friends who had accompanied them 
from Nazareth. The fact that they did not observe His 
absence illustrates the naturalness and unconstraint of the 
conditions in which the Boy Jesus had been trained. To 
this day the incident of separation from friends in these 
great caravans is a common one, and excites little anxiety. 

It was not till the evening of the first day’s journey — 
perhaps when they had arrived at Beeroth, some six miles 
north of Jerusalem — that they missed Him, and by that 
time wondered why He had not rejoined them. Then, 
with intense anxiety, they began to search for Him, and 
their anxiety deepened to agony when he was nowhere to 
be found in the little companies of Nazarenes or other Gal- 
ileans. With hearts full of forebodings, they turned back 
to Jerusalem, looking for Him all along the route. Still 
they could hear nothing of Him. He was nowhere to be 
seen in the entire caravans, nor among the later stragglers. 
It was not till the third day that they discovered Him in 
the Temple, f probably in one of the halls or rooms which 
surrounded the Court of the Israelites, and were used for 
purposes of teaching. They were amazed to see the gracious 

* Luke ii. 43. t Luke ii. 46, “ After three days.” 


88 


THE LIFE OF LIVES. 


Boy “ sitting in the midst of the Rabbis, both hearing them 
and asking them questions.” The instruction of the young 
was a constant function of the leading Scribes, and they 
always showed ready kindness to any youthful enquirer. 
It is not impossible that among these Rabbis may have been 
men so famous as Hilleland Shammai, and Bava ben Butah, 
in their extreme old age ; and among the younger may have 
been Rabban Simeon, son of Shammai ; and Gamaliel, 
son of Hillel ; and Nicodemus, and Jochanan ben Zakkai. 

Overawed perhaps at first, Joseph and Mary would hardly 
venture to thrust themselves into that group of learned 
officials and Rabbis, surrounded as they were with almost 
awful reverence ; but they took in enough of the scene 
to notice that “ all that heard Him were astonished at His 
understanding and answers.” 

In the Apocryphal Gospels, and in many books, the 
significance of the scene has been entirely misunderstood. 
In pictures, also, Jesus has been represented sitting, or 
standing, in an attitude of authority, as though He were 
teaching and catechising these Scribes, the most famed for 
learning in their day. Such a notion is contrary to all that 
we know of Christ’s gracious humility. Anything like for- 
wardness or presumption would have awakened nothing but 
displeasure in Rabbis accustomed to deferential homage ;* 
but, on the contrary, the Boy of Nazareth had won their 
admiration by His modesty and intelligence. He was 
“ sitting ” at the feet of the Rabbis, “ hearing them,” i. e. y 
trying to learn all which they could teach ; and ingenuously, 
but with consummate insight, “answering” the questions 
which they addressed to Him. What most astonished 

* See Pirqe Avotk, v. 12, 15. Baba Metzia , f. 84, 2. Similar stories are 
told of Eliezer ben Azariah, R. Ashi, and Josephus (Vit. 2). Comp. Baba 
Metzia , f. 48, 6, where we are told how Rabbi Elaza, and Rabbi Judah (the 
Holy) sat on the ground as boys before two great Rabbis, “ asking questions 
and starting objections. The other Rabbis exclaimed, * We drink of their 
water ' (i. e., we imbibe their wisdom), ‘ and they sit upon the ground ! ’ Seats 
were then brought in for the two children.” 


THE FIRST ANECDOTE. 89 

them was His knowledge of the Scriptures, and the wisdom, 
beyond His boyish age, which His answers manifested. 
His parents too — for Mary’s awful secret was hidden deep 
within her heart, and Joseph was regarded as His father — 
were amazed to see Him so happy, so calmly at ease, in 
that august assembly. At last His mother ventured to 
address to Him the agitated question, “ Child (reuvov), 
why didst thou thus to us ? Behold, thy father and I were 
seeking thee in sorrow ? ” * To Him — so wrapt up in all 
that He had seen and heard, and living in inward com- 
munion with His Father in Heaven — their distress seemed 
strange. When they first missed Him, where, He asked, 
would it have been most natural for them at once to seek 
Him ? “ Why is it that ye were seeking me ? Did ye not 

know that I must be in my Father’s house ? ” f 

The rendering of the A. V., “ about my Father s business ,” 
may now be regarded as having been finally disproved. It 
would be, in every way, much more difficult to explain ; for 
Jesus had been in the Temple, not in any fulfilment of His 
mission, but as a boy, to worship and to learn. His kinsfolk 
must have observed His rapture as He had spent day after 
day of the Feast in the Temple Courts. They must have 
been long familiar with His ardent love for instruction, 
and with the untroubled simplicity with which He always 
looked up to God as His Father. “ Where then,” He 
seems to ask them, “ would it be natural for you at once 
to seek for me, except in my Father s House ? ” It was an 
accident that, when they started homeward, they had not 
noticed His absence ; — but, having missed Him, surely 
they might have known the one place where they would be 
most sure to find Him ! 

* Luke ii. 48. 

f The contrast of the sublime and truthful simplicity of the Evangelists with 
the unauthorised additions of the Apocryphal Gospels may be seen by reading 
the very different accounts of this incident in the Gospel of St. Thomas. The 
attempt to glorify Christ by inventing details instantly profanes the Ideal, 
which nothing but truth could paint. 


90 


THE LIFE OF LIVES. 


What could they say? They could not take in the full 
meaning of His words. The answer came to them like a 
marvellous gleam of light. They felt that worlds of mys- 
tery lay hidden in the depths of the Boy’s soul — of mystery 
which they could not fathom. His mother especially pon- 
dered over His words, and kept them in her heart. What 
would be the end of these things ? Whereunto would they 
ultimately grow ? 

And yet to His parents the Divine Boy was all tender- 
ness and meek submission. From His earliest years “ He 
was meek and lowly of heart.” * He returned with them 
at once, and without question. They soon found them- 
selves once more in Nazareth, among the poor yet happy 
surroundings of their Holy Home. There was nothing 
froward or defiant in the bearing of Mary’s Son. His years 
passed in uneventful calm, as He “ kept advancing in wis- 
dom and stature, and in favour with God and man.” f 

Many of the great Prophets of the Old Testament had 
lived as He did, through a youth of unknown preparation 
— as did David among the sheepfolds, and Elijah in the 
tents of the Bed’awin, and Amos as a gatherer of sycamore 
leaves at Tekoah, and Jeremiah in quiet Anathoth, and the 
Baptist in the wilderness. They had waited, as He waited, 
the call which summoned them to perform in the face of 
the world the high mission of their lives. 

And so, as Irenaeus says, “ He passed through every age, 
having been made an infant to sanctify infants ; a little one 
among the little ones, sanctifying the little ones ; among 
the youths a youth.” J That His childhood and early 
boyhood were full of happy peace we have every reason to 

* Matt. xi. 29. 

f Comp. Prov. iii. 4. “So shalt thou find favour and good success in the 
sight of God and man.” Pirqe Avdth iii. 10. “ In whomsoever the mind of 

man delights, in him also the Spirit of God delights.” It is not said that the 
Baptist grew up in favour with men . On the lifelong holy submission of Jesus 
to the will of His Heavenly Father, see John iv. 34, v. 30, vi. 38, viii. 18, etc. 

X Iren. c. Haer. ii. 22. 


THE FIRST ANECDOTE. 


9i 


infer from the infinite tenderness which He always displayed 
towards children, and His sympathetic references to their 
joyous games and trustful gentleness.* His divine nature 
deepened, it did not quench, the keenness of His human 
sympathies for His family, for His nation, for all mankind. 
His greatness was not the separate greatness of Poet, or 
Artist, or Orator, or Hero, but the unprecedented greatness 
of Harmony and Peace, Humility and Majesty. His hatred 
of sin in its every form, combined with tender compassion 
for even the worst of sinners, made Him the fairest of the 
children of men, the most supreme representative of man 
irt that union with God which is the sole greatness that 
it is open to our nature to achieve by the grace which 
comes from Him alone.f 

* Matt. xi. 16, xix. 13-15. 

j- On the whole subject, see Ullmann, The Sinlessness of Jesus , pp. 50-59. 


CHAPTER IX. 


LESSONS OF THE UNRECORDED YEARS. 

“ He shall grow up before Him as a tender plant, and as a root out of 
the dry ground.” — Isaiah liii. 2. 

“ Having food and raiment, in these we shall have enough.” — i Tim. 
vi. 8. 

“Ecclesia habet quatuor Evangelia, haeresis plurima.” — Ir.en.zeus 
iii. ii, 9. 

“ He went down with them ... to Nazareth, and was 
subject unto them.” Such is St. Luke s brief epitome. It 
is the only record left to us of nearly twenty years of the 
life of Christ, from the time when He had attained the age 
of twelve till when “ He was about thirty years of age.”* 
We are told the one anecdote of boyhood, of which we 
have been trying to grasp the significance, and, beyond 
that, only the general facts of His growth in wisdom and 
stature and favour with God and man, and His sweet filial 
obedience during His abode in that beautiful Valley of 
Nazareth. This is literally all that the four Gospels record 
of all except — at the outside — some three and a half years 
of the life of the Son of Man and the Son of God. 

This is all that they record; but in St. Mark, a single 
casual word — not meant for any part of the biography, but 
occurring in the most incidental manner in the discontented 
murmurs of the people of Nazareth — comes like a revealing 
flash to illuminate the darkness. That word is “ the 
Carpenter 

* Luke iii. 23, R. V. “ Jesus, when He began to teach , was about thirty 
years of age.” 

f Mark vi. 3. Justin Martyr says, “ He used, when among men, to work 
as a carpenter, making ploughs and yokes.” Dial . c. Tryph. 88. 

92 


UNRECORDED YEARS. 


93 


Jesus had been teaching in the synagogue so familiar to 
Him in His early years, and His disciples were with Him. 
As He taught, the Nazarenes were amazed at His wisdom, 
and His mighty works, but the humility of His origin was 
a stumbling-block to them. Was not this man a peasant 
like themselves? In what respect could He claim any 
superiority over them? Did they not know Mary His 
mother, and His four brothers, and His sisters? Had He 
not laboured among them for His daily bread ? Was He 
not in the eyes of the Scribes a mere ignoramus? How 
could they accept a teaching so authoritative, claims so 
lofty ? A prophet could expect but little honour in his own 
country, and among his own kin, and in his own house. 
“ Is not this the Carpenter?” * Christ might have come 
as a Prince like Buddha, or a Philosopher like Confucius, or 
a Priest like Zoroaster, or a Warrior like Mohammed ; but 
He chose to come as “ the Carpenter of Nazareth.” The 
name of scorn lingered on through the centuries. “ What 
is the Carpenter doing now?” sneeringly asked Libanius, 
the pagan sophist, of a Christian. “ He is making a coffin ,” 
answered the Christian; and shortly after, Julian, the 
apostate Emperor, whom Libanius regarded with such 
proud devotion, was cut short in his brilliant career of 
statesmanship and victory, and died with the words 
“ Thou hast conquered , O Galilean ! ” upon his lips.f 

The innate vulgarity which showed itself in the scoff of 

* Mark vi. 3. Hence Origen is mistaken when he says ( c . Cels. vi. 36) that 
“ Jesus has never been described as the carpenter.” The Jews, wiser by far in 
this respect than the Pagans, honoured manual labour, and many of their 
greatest men — among them Hillel and Akiba — were never ashamed to have 
once earned their bread by the sweat of their brow. But how deep was the 
humility of Christ’s choice may be estimated if we read Ecclus. xxxviii. 24. 

f There is a curious passage in Succah. “ ‘ And the Lord showed me four 
carpenters' (Zech. i. 20). Who are these four carpenters? Rav Chana bar 
Bizna says that they were Messiah the Son of David; Messiah the son of Joseph; 
Elijah, and the Priest of Righteousness.” ( Succah , f. 52, 2 ; Hershon, Taint . 
Misc. p. 77.) 


94 


THE LIFE OF LIVES. 


the Nazarenes has been common in all ages, although, 
again and again, those who have sprung from the humblest 
ranks among the people — like Mohammed, and St. Francis 
of Assisi, and Gregory VII., and Luther, and Shakespeare, 
and Bunyan — have shown themselves to be moving forces 
in the world. But the low sneer becomes to us an illumin- 
ating truth, revealing to us the methods and purposes of 
God. 

The very silence of the Evangelists about those long 
years is full of eloquence. Contrast it with the profane 
babblings and old wives’ fables of unauthorised invention, 
and it becomes rich in most blessed significance! 

Let us consider what it means. 

It shows the truthfulness of the Evangelists. It might 
well have seemed most strange to them, as at first sight it 
does to us, that He in whom they recognised the Son of 
God, the Saviour of the world, should have spent in lowly 
obscurity and unrecorded silence all but so small a fraction 
of His years on earth. They must have yearned, as we 
yearn, to lift the curtain of apparent oblivion which had 
been suffered to rest upon the Life of Lives. But they 
would not be of the “ fools ” who 

“ Rush in where angels fear to tread ” ; 

nor would they surround the brow of Christ with a halo of 
lying miracles. They would record nothing where nothing 
was given them to record. 

Throughout these four narratives they show a great 
simplicity, which is the most certain stamp of truthfulness. 
They burst into no raptures, they abandon themselves to no 
ecstasies, they indulge in no notes of admiration. “ Ils se 
souviennent, voilh tout ! ” * 

Yet this reticence is in itself rich in the deepest and most 
necessary lessons. 

“Fruit is seedl' What the soil and the grain have been, 
that will the harvest be. When we see the perfect rose we 

* Didon, i, liv. 


UNRECORDED YEARS. 


95 


know at once that there can have been no blight, no imper- 
fection in the bud. So far, then, as the revelation of 
Christ’s Person is concerned, we recognise, without special 
record, that those unrecorded years must have been years 
of holy and sinless humility. 

But, further, the one word preserved (with such apparent 
casualness) by St. Mark, brings clearly home to us that 
those long years of Jesus in Nazareth were years of prepar- 
ation, of poverty, of obscurity, of labor, 

(i.) They were years of preparation : However deep 
must have been the consciousness in the soul of the youth- 
ful Christ that He was, in a special sense, the Son of His 
Heavenly Father, and that He was born to do His work, 
yet, in meekness and lowliness of heart, He would abide 
God’s good time, He would await the pointing of His finger, 
the whisper of His voice. “ He shall not strive, nor cry, 
neither shall His voice be heard in the streets. A bruised 
reed will He not break, and the smoking flax will He not 
quench, until He send forth judgment unto victory.” * The 
life with God and in God sufficed Him. Men might look 
for manifestations of God in the earthquake or the thunder, 
or the mighty strong wind which shakes the mountains and 
rends their rocks: to Jesus, hidden in the cleft of that 
mountain valley, they came, as to Elijah, in the “still, 
small voice.” 

(ii.) And it teaches us a most blessed lesson, that God 
Himself, hid in the veil of mortal flesh, should voluntarily 
have undergone those long silent years from childhood to 
manhood in the lot of poverty, of obscurity, of labour. 

Of poverty. The Gospel of Christ is a Gospel to the 
poor, who are the many. Poverty is the normal lot of the 
vast majority of mankind. There was nothing squalid, 
nothing torturing, nothing degraded in this poverty. It 
was the modest competence, earned by manly toil, which 
suffices to provide all that men truly need, though not all 
* Matt. xii. 19, 20 ; Is. xlii. 2, 3. 


THE LIFE OF LIVES. 


96 

that they passionately desire. It was the poverty which is 
content with food and raiment. Men, by myraids, strive 
passionately for wealth. In all ages Mammon has been the 
god of their commonest worship, — 

“ Mammon, the least erected spirit that fell 
From heaven ; for e’en in heaven his looks and thoughts 
Were always downward bent, admiring more 
The riches of heaven’s pavement, trodden gold, 

Than aught divine or holy else enjoyed 
In vision beatific.” 

Men strive and agonise for gold ; they toil and moil, and 
cheat, and steal, and oppress, and poison, and ruin their 
brethren to get money ; they sell their souls, they turn 
their whole lives into a degradation and a lie, because of 
the false glamour of riches. The old song says rightly : — 

“ The gods from above the mad labour behold, 

And pity mankind who would perish for gold.” 

Yet after all it is but very few who, with all their passionate 
endeavours, attain to riches. The Dives who is clad in 
purple and fine linen, and fares sumptuously every day, is 
but one out of every hundred thousand ; and very often his 
earthly wealth tends only to ossify and dehumanise his 
heart. The lesson of Christ’s poverty has helped myraids 
of the humble to say, with brave Martin Luther, “ My 
God, I thank Thee that Thou hast made me poor and a 
beggar upon earth.” And, as the wise king had prayed : 
“Give me neither poverty nor riches; feed me with food 
convenient for me,” so Christ, by the example of these 
long, silent years of poverty, gave deeper emphasis to His 
own teaching : “ Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon 
earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves 
dig through and steal ; but lay up for yourselves treasures 
in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and 
where thieves do not dig through nor steal.” * In the 
*Matt. vi. 19, 20. 


UNRECORDED YEARS. 


97 


workshop at Nazareth, faithful in that which was little, 
Christ revealed to mankind where to seek, and how to 
enjoy the true riches. By long example He added force to 
His own precept : “ Be not anxious for the morrow, for the 
morrow will be anxious for the things of itself.” “ Be not 
anxious for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall 
drink ; nor yet for your body what ye shall put on. Is not 
the life more than food, and the body than raiment.” * 

(iii.) And it was a life of obscurity . Men love fame; 
they will risk life itself, they will face the cannon which 
pour forth destruction into the midst of them, to win 
renown, and “ fly victorious in the mouths of men.” This 
passion to win fame is not so grovellingly ignoble as that 
love of money which is a root of all kinds of evil ?f 

Fame is the spur that the clear spirit doth raise 
(That last infirmity of noble minds), 

To scorn delights, and live laborious days ; 

But the fair guerdon when we hope to find, 

And think to burst out into sudden blaze, 

Comes the blind Fury with th' abhorred shears 
And slits the thin-spun life.” 

It is infinitely difficult to disillusion men from this 
passion, although in age after age the greatest have been 
among the saddest of mankind. “ Omnia fui , et nihil 
expedit ,” sighed the Roman Emperor, who had risen from 
lowliness to the topmost summit of earthly grandeur. 
“All my life long I have been prosperous in peace and 
victorious in war, feared by my enemies, loved and hon- 
oured by my friends,” wrote Abdalrahman the Magnifi- 
cent, in his private diary. “ Amid all this wealth and glory 
I have counted the days of my life which I could call 
happy. They amount to fourteen!”^: Our great drama- 
tist makes his holy king say : — 

* Matt. vi. 34, 25. t Tim. vi. 10. 

\ Quoted by Gibbon, ch. Iii. (ed. Milman, v. 197). 


9 8 


THE LIFE OF LIVES. 


“ My crown is in my heart, not on my head, 

Not set with diamonds, or Indian stones, 

Nor to be seen : my crown is called Content — 

A crown it is which seldom kings enjoy ! ” 

And again : — 

“ I swear ’tis better to be lowly born 
And range with humble dwellers in content, 

Than to be perked up in a glistering grief, 

And wear a golden sorrow.” 

“ I never spent such tedious hours in all my life," 
exclaimed Napoleon I., as he flung into the corners of the 
room the superb coronation robes which he had worn when 
the Pope of Rome, in the Cathedral of Notre Dame, had 
placed the crown of St. Louis on the brows of him who 
had, a few years before, been the poor and struggling 
sub-lieutenant of artillery. “ Right well I know ” — such 
are the words which one of the chief poets of our generation 
puts into the mouth of the mighty Merlin — 

“ Right well know I that fame is half dis-fame, 

The cackle of the unborn about the grave. 

Sweet were the days when I was all unknown, 

But when my name was lifted up, the storm 
Brake on the mountain, and I cared not for it.” 

And so the “ Emptiness of emptiness, emptiness of 
emptiness, all is emptiness ! ” of the richest, wisest, and 
most splendid of earthly kings * has been reverberated 
from century to century; and with that verdict of disil- 
lusionment comes the old wise lesson, “ Seekest thou great 
things for thyself? Seek them not, saith the Lord.” f 
Jesus gave to the lesson of this world-wide experience His 
seal of confirmation by His unknown years at Nazareth 
and thus, by example as by His words, He says to ust 

* Ecc. i. 2. 

f Jer. xlv. 5. Comp. Luke xii. 29 ; John v. 30, 44, viii. 50. 


UNRECORDED YEARS. 


99 

“ Come unto Me . . . for I am meek and lowly in heart, 
and ye shall find rest unto your souls.” * 

(iv.) And His was a life of manual toil. In this respect 
also how inestimable a boon did He confer upon the toil- 
ing millions of mankind : 

“ Not to the rich He came, nor to the ruling, 

Men full of meat, whom most His heart abhors; 

Not to the fools, grown insolent in fooling, 

Most when the poor are dying out of doors.” 

There has been a haughty tendency in all ages to despise 
manual labour, and look down on those who live by it. 
All trade and mechanic work was to the ancient world 
despicable ( f3avav6ov ), a thing to be left to slaves, or 
those but a little above them. So it was in the days of the 
Roman Empire ; so it was even among our Teutonic 
forefathers. A “ base mechanic ” was quite an ordinary 
description, in the days of Queen Elizabeth, for the mass 
of the people, f and to this day the insolent ineptitude of 
commonplace vulgarity thinks it an immense disparagement 
to call a man “ a mere tradesman.” The Jews alone among 
the nations rose to a wiser standpoint, though even among 
them we find such haughty sentence as: “ How can he get 
wisdom that holdeth the plough . . . whose talk is of 
bullocks ?”J 

Even “ the sweet and noble Hillel,” though he rose from 
a position of the lowliest poverty, was so tainted by the 
pride of leisurely sciolism as to say, “No am-lia-aretz can 
be pious.” The lot of artisans was, however, indefinitely 
raised among the Jews by the fact that the greatest Rabbis 
were taught that it was well to be able to maintain them- 
selves by a trade. What sublimer lesson could Jesus have 
taught to mankind than by spending thirty unknown years 
as the humble Carpenter of Nazareth? How fundamen- 
tally did He thus rectify the judgments of man's feeble and 
*Matt. xi. 29. fComp. Shakespeare, Ant. and Cleop. v. 2. 

JEcclus. xxxviii. 25. 


uira 


IOO 


THE LIFE OF LIVES. 


erring day! How did He thus illustrate the truth that 
“ all honest labour is an honour to the labourer ” ! How 
did He further demonstrate by this example that man has 
no essential dignity except that which comes from his 
inherent nature as created in the image of God ! Shakes- 
peare complains : 

“ Not a man for being simply man 
Hath any honour ; but honour for those honours 
Which are without him, as place, riches, favour, 

Prizes of accident as oft as merit.” 

Buddhism has its Arhats; Brahminism its Yogis; 
Mohammedanism its Dervishes ; Manichean asceticism has 
its monks and hermits. But Christ wished to show that 
He who, by His Divine Being, was immeasurably and 
inconceivably greater than the greatest in all the world, 
lost no particle of His grandeur by living the common 
«very-day life, and by learning to labour truly, and earning 
His bread by the sweat of His brow. 

“ He who is without friends, without money, without 
home, without country, is still at the least a man ; and he 
who has all these is no more.”* To all alike — to the 
poorest, the lowliest, the most oppressed, the most perse- 
cuted — God in Christ gives an equal chance of happiness. 
Complete earthly insignificance is the lot of the mass of 
mankind. Millions might say, “ We are the merest 
cyphers.” All but the very few, when death comes might 
murmur : 

“ I shall be gone to the crowd untold 
Of men by the cause they served unknown, 

Who lie in the myriad graves of old, 

Never a story, and never a stone.” 

Some men are inclined to ask why God placed them in 
depths where their voices can never be heard. The answer 
is that life means something infinitely more precious than 
* Sir Walter Scott, Rob Roy. 


UNRECORDED YEARS. 


IOI 


power and fame. The object of life — as the silent, unre- 
corded years of Christ’s life teach us — is neither to be 
known, nor to be praised, but siinply to do our duty, and 
to the best of our power to serve our brother-men. The 
inch-high dignities of man on the insignificant stage of his 
little greatness are annihilated in the infinitude of God, to 
whom all human life, apart from Him, is but as “a trouble 
of ants ’mid a million million of suns!” But 

“ All service is true service, while it lasts,” 

and 

“ All service ranks the same with God, 

Whose puppets are we, one and all ; 

There is no great and small.” 

If we realise this truth in the light of Christ’s early life, we 
add an undreamed-of “ grandeur to the beatings of the 
heart.” If we live blameless and harmless children of 
God without rebuke, we may make our lives as splendid in 
the sight of our Heavenly Father as though we stood on 
the summits of humanity, clad with angels’ wings. The 
Archangel Gabriel thought it as high an honour to help 
back to its nest the little struggling ant as to save the great 
King from committing a sin. 

“ He did God’s work, to him all one, 

If on the earth, or in the sun.” 

All readers then, will, I trust, agree with me that the 
silence of the Evangelists about those thirty years in the 
earthly life of the Lord of Glory is the grandest eloquence ; 
and that merely by living this unknown life of labour as a 
peasant in a Galilean village, Christ set the very example, 
and taught the very lesson, which the untold millions of 
mankind most deeply need — it was the lesson that life 
comes indeed differently to the good and to the bad, to the 
wise and to the foolish, but that it has gifts of equal blessed- 
ness for the low and for the high, for the poor and for the 


102 THE LIFE OF LIVES. 

rich. To all true men, with no respect of persons, are flung 
equally wide 

“ The Gates of Heaven, on golden hinges moving.” 

But it is perfectly lawful and reverent for us, though we 
cannot narrate a single incident of Christ’s youth and early 
manhood, yet to try to realise all that can be ascertained 
of the outer circumstances in the midst of which that life 
was spent. 

“ He went down ... to Nazareth and was subject unto 
them.” 

What Was the scenery around the humble home in which 
Jesus grew up? I need not repeat the description which 
I have given elsewhere of that little white village on the 
hill — “ urbs florida et virgultis consita ” * — lying amid its 
green and umbrageous fields “ like a handful of pearls in a 
goblet of emerald.” Suffice it to say that, while the 
scenery is by no means grand or overwhelming, it is full of 
peaceful loveliness. In this, as in all else, there was noth- 
ing exceptional in the conditions which surrounded the 
youth and early manhood of the Saviour. 

“ Needs no show of mountain hoary, 

Winding shore, or deepening glen, 

Where the landscape in its glory 
Teaches truth to wondering men ; 

Give true hearts but earth and sky, 

And some flowers to bloom and die ; 

Homely scenes and simple views, 

Lowly thoughts may best infuse.” 

As the boy Jesus stood on the hill-top of His native 
town, gazing over scenes rich in the historic memories of 
the Chosen People, and rejoicing as the wind of the moun- 
tains and the sea played in His long hair, He would have 
seen the pelicans, with their great white wings, flying in 
long lines to the Lake of Galilee ; and the roller-bird, with 

* Jerome in Is. xi. I. 


UNRECORDED YEARS. 


103 


its plumage of vivid blue, flash like a living sapphire among 
the pale grey olive-trees ; and the kingfisher, perched on a 
reed beside the waters, fishing eagerly from hour to hour; 
and the harmless doves, soiled sometimes as they lighted 
on the dustheap^ of the streets, but “ covered with silver 
wings, and their feathers like gold ” when they soared once 
more into the azure, and reflected the sunlight from every 
varying plume. He had watched with loving eye the 
eagle soaring with supreme dominion in the cloudless sky ; 
the vultures which gather round the fallen carcass; the 
ravens which lay up no store for food, and yet the Heavenly 
Father feedeth them ; the innumerable little brown 
sparrows which twittered in the over-grown foliage of the 
water-courses — so valueless that you could buy two of them 
for a farthing, and, if you spent two farthings, could get 
five , so that one would be thrown in for nothing,* and yet 
not one of them falling to the ground without our Father's 
love. He had noticed “ the hen, with passionate maternal 
love, clucking to gather its young beneath the shelter of 
its widespread wings ; the lambs blithely following their 
shepherd, yet going astray, and roaming into the wild ” ; 
the sower flinging out the grains of wheat which sometimes 
fell on rocky, or trodden, or thorny ground, or sank into 
the good soil, to die indeed, but to spring up again in the 
hundredfold of golden harvests. He would watch the 
green blade passing into the ear, and then into the full corn 
in the ear; and the fig-tree in springtide putting forth its 
tender leaves ; and the vine-branch hung with its rich 
purple clusters; and the grain of mustard-seed, smallest of 
all seeds, but growing up into the largest and bushiest of 
garden herbs, so that the birds of the air took shelter in its 
branches ; and the rushes whispering and wavering in the 
evening wind ; and the lilies of the field brightening the 
meadows and the mountain sides with blue and purple and 
scarlet, like the broidery on the girdle of the High Priest; 

* Matt. x. 29 ; Luke xii. 6. 


104 


THE LIFE OF LIVES. 


and the many-coloured tulip, the golden armaryllis, the 
scarlet anemone arrayed more splendidly than Solomon in 
all his glory. He would notice, too, all the wild creatures 
with an eager and tender gaze — the sly wisdom of the 
serpent, the fox creeping to its hole, the wild wolves and 
prowling jackals, as well as the sheep which hear the voice 
of their shepherd and follow him when he calls them by 
their names. He would watch the lightning hurling its 
flame to earth, or flashing from the East even to the West, 
and gaze on the sky red with the promise of golden days, 
or lurid with the menace of the storm. He would listen to 
the welcome plash of the fertilising rain, and to the rush of 
the swollen streams, and to the south wind with its burning 
heat, and to the breeze of which we hear the sound but 
cannot tell whence it cometh nor whither it goeth. Nature 
was to Him no blank impervious barrier between the soul 
and God, but a glorious crystal mirror in which the Creator 
was reflected ; and every one of these sights and sounds of 
common nature, treasured up in His pure and sinless soul, 
became parables of spiritual truth and illustrations of 
eternal wisdom. 

“ To Thee all nature’s oracles unfold 
Their wondrous meaning, deep-concealed of old, 

Now by Thy touch of sympathy laid bare : 

To Thee the richness of their truth they yield, 

Each sparrow, and each lily of the field, 

Preaching the gospel of a Father’s care. 

The shepherd seeking his lost lambs again, 

The housewife’s bread, the gently falling rain, 

The morning sun that climbs the heavenly height ; 

The green grass, and the spirits of careless youth, 

Are all but garments of the living truth 
That through them shines, and fills our lives with light.” * 

Nor was it otherwise with the commonest sights and 
sounds and incidents of daily life. To Him all became 

* Quoted by Mr. Wicksteed in his translation of H. Van Oort’s Bible for the 
Young , v. 198. 


UNRECORDED YEARS. 


105 


fruitful as vehicles of the holiest teaching, which was the 
more impressive because all alike could understand it, from 
the highest to the lowest. The form which His teaching 
took furnishes an indirect proof of His daily familiarity 
with the common life of the people during the long years 
which He spent as one of the labouring classes. He had 
watched the processions of the bridegrooms, and the games 
of the little ones, and the gay clothing of the courtiers 
from Tiberias. “ He was at home,” says Hausrath,* “ in 
those poor, windowless Syrian hovels, in which the house- 
wife must light a candle in the daytime in order to seek for 
her lost piece of silver.f He is acquainted with the secrets 
of the bakehouse, \ and the gardener, § and the builder, || 
and with things which the higher classes never see — such as 
the * good measure, pressed down, and shaken together, 
and running over,' of the cornchandler ; T the rotten, leak- 
ing wine-skin of the wine-dealer ; ** the clumsy patchwork 
of the peasant-woman ; ff and the brutal manners of the 
upper servants towards the lower. $ A hundred other 
features of a similar kind are enwoven by Him into His 
parables. Reminiscences given of His more special handi- 
craft have been found, it is believed, in some of His sayings. 
The parable of the Splinter and the Beam is said to recall 
the carpenter’s shop ; §§ the uneven foundation of the 
houses, the building-yard ; |||| the cubit that is added, His 
workshop the distinction in the appearance of the 
green and dry wood, the drying shed ; *** but from the fre- 
quency of expressions peculiar to Him, it would be 
possible to find similar evidence for every other handicraft. 
Nevertheless the circumstance that His discourses are not 


* New Testament Times ii. 137. 
\ Matt. xiii. 33 ; Luke xiii. 21. 

| Luke vi. 48, 49. 

** Matt. ix. 17. 

X\ Luke xii. 45. 

HI Matt. vii. 24-27. 

***Luke xxiii. 31. 


f Luke xv. 8. 

§ Matt. xv. 13. 

Luke vi. 38. 
ff Matt. ix. 16. 
§§ Matt. vii. 3. 
ITT Matt. vi. 27. 


io6 THE LIFE OF LIVES. 

drawn from rare spectacles and unusual processes, but 
always move in the sphere of the ordinary man’s activity, 
has contributed to establish their special popularity.” 

We may say then of Jesus, that, for the infinite consola- 
tion of the poor, during by far the greater part of His life, 
He showed by an example more powerful than any teach- 
ing, that “ Man is as great as he is in God’s sight, and no 
greater.” 


CHAPTER X. 


THE HOME AT NAZARETH. 

** Love had he found in huts where poor men lie ; 

His only teachers were the woods and rills. 

The silence that is in the starry sky, 

The peace that is in the eternal hills.” 

— Wordsworth. 

The hill-town of Nazareth on the southwest of the old 
tribal district of Zabulon was remote, insignificant, and 
poor. It was traversed by one of the roads from Ptolemais 
to Damascus, and was near large and populous townships, 
like Sepphoris and Tiberias, but it never rose into promi- 
nence. It is not once mentioned in the Old Testament, nor 
in the Talmud, nor in the Midrashim. The recent attempts 
to make out that it was the centre of a busy commerce are 
entirely unsuccessfuf. It is not alluded to by any Gentile 
writer, nor even by Josephus, though he writes so much 
about Galilee. The Jews despised it so entirely as to have 
among them the proverb,* “ Can any good thing come out 

* The prophecy quoted by Matthew (ii. 23), w He shall be called a Naza- 
rene,” is of uncertain explanation. It is probably an allusion to Netzer 
Branch (Is. xi. 1 ; Comp. Tsemach, Jer. xxiii. 5. ; Zech. iii. 8), or Notsri , as 
Nazareth may perhaps mean “ Protectress.” The Christians were contemptu- 
ously called “ Nazarenes.” Isaiah (ix. 1, 2) describes the region in which 
Nazareth stood as inhabited by “those that walk in darkness,” and “ that 
dwell in the land of the shadow of death ” (John i. 46, vii. 52, xix. 19. Light- 
foot, Hor. Hebr. 232). Galilee, occupied by so many Phoenicians, Syrians, Ara- 
bians, and other Gentiles (Jos. Antt. xiii. 15, 4 ; B. J. iii. 3, 2 ; Strabo xvi. 2, 
34. Comp. Is. ix. 1) was spoken of with great scorn (Acts ii. 7 ; Matt, xxvi, 
69, 73), though the inhabitants, in their glad and healthy enthusiasm, were far 
superior to other Jews. See Tacitus Hist. v. 6 ; Josephus B. J. 9 ; iii. 3, 2. 
Barak, Deborah, Elon, Elisha, Hoshea, Jonah, Nahum, Tobit, and many 
other men of fame sprang from Galilee. 

107 


io8 


THE LIFE OF LIVES. 


of Nazareth?” And afterwards the brethren of Jesus 
spoke of work in Galilee as work “ in secret.” * 

The position of an artisan in such a place must have 
been humble indeed. The picture of a carpenter’s shop at 
Nazareth, drawn by Mr. Holman Hunt, will probably give a 
very true conception of what such a shop looked like in the 
days of Christ ; f for in the unchanging East the aspect of 
things remains the same for century after century. It was 
probably a house and workshop in one, and lighted mostly 
from the door, except by night, when the single lamp 
suspended in the centre was lit, “ showing curiously com- 
mingled the furniture of the family and the tools of the 
mechanic.” I have noticed in the homes of Nazareth the 
gay-coloured quilts, neatly rolled up in the daytime, and 
placed in a corner of the room, which at night are the beds 
of the family. There is usually no table, but a little circu- 
lar or octagonal stand, sometimes gaily painted or inlaid, 
on which is placed the common dish of libban , or stewed 
fruit, and the bread which form the staple meals. The 
bronze basin and ewer are brought out after the meal by 
the youngest member of the family, that he may pour 
water over the hands of all who have been helping them- 
selves out of the common dish. 

Such was the home, for thirty years, of the Son of God, 
the Saviour of the world. He lived amid the most ordi- 
nary conditions. He would not seek for Himself an excep- 
tional lot, but one which most closely resembled the com- 
mon life of men, of whom all but a very few live humble, 
unknown lives, and earn their bread by the labour of their 
hands. There was nothing squalid or repellent in such a 
life, but it served as the most forcible of proofs that the 

* John vii. 3-5. 

\ I saw Mr. Hunt when he was living at Jerusalem, and he drew this interior 
of a real carpenter’s shop at Nazareth to illustrate my Life of Christ. Since 
those days the primitive simplicity of Nazareth is said to have partly dis- 
appeared. 


THE HOME AT NAZARETH. 


109 


true greatness of man consists in the immortal nature 
which God has bestowed upon him, and not in the adjuncts 
by which he is surrounded. Christ, by the years of His 
earthly obscurity, meant to teach us that God judges not 
as man judges, but that the sole appreciable greatness of 
any man, be he emperor or peasant, lies in the fact that 
God breathed into his nostrils the breath of life — that God 
made him .a little lower than the angels, to crown him with 
glory and honour. 


CHAPTER XI. 


THE FAMILY AT NAZARETH. 

“ Home is Heaven for beginners ; the place of peace ; the shelter not 
onlv from all injury but from all terror, doubt, and division.” 

IN the humble abode of the carpenter, Jesus learnt the 
strength and tenderness of human affection which breathes 
through all His utterances. Joseph and Mary were so poor 
that the Virgin could only offer at her purification the pair 
of turtle doves which none but the humblest mothers were 
permitted by the Law to present in the place of lambs. 
The fact that she was a descendant of David — which His 
enemies never denied, and which is even admitted by the 
Talmud * — made no difference in the lowliness of the posi- 
tion of the Holy Family. The great Hillel is also said to 
have been of David’s race, yet until manhood he was in so 
humble a lot as barely to be able to earn his daily bread by 
toiling as an artisan. There is many an obscure working- 
man in England at this moment who has the blood of the 
Plantagenets in his veins. A few centuries entirely obliter- 
ate any dignity which may be derivable from a royal 
origin. In Egypt and Arabia we constantly see common 
beggars who wear the green turban which shows them to be 
of the family of Mohammed.f 

*See Derenbourg, Hist, de la Palestine , p. 349, who quotes Sanhedrin f. 43, 
1 (in editions not expurgated). The late Dr. Schiller Szinessy, however, called 
Derenbourg an am-ha-aretz for understanding the words thus, and said they 
only meant that Jesus was “ influential with the (Roman) Government ” ! 

f St. Peter, very soon after the Crucifixion, and St. Paul — Rabbi and San- 
hedrist as he had been — speak of Jesus being “ of the seed of David according 
to the flesh,” as though it was a fact which could not be challenged (Acts ii. 
29-31 ; Rom. i. 3 ; 2 Tim. ii. 8. Comp. Heb. vii. 14 ; Hegesippus ap. 
Euseb. ii. 8, iii. 11, 12, 19, 20). 


no 


THE FAMILY AT NAZARETH. hi 

Joseph, according to tradition, , was considerably older 
than the Virgin Mary, and as he is not once mentioned in 
the Gospels after the Passover visit to Jerusalem, and as no 
other trace of him, or allusion to him, has been preserved, 
except in the Apocryphal Gospel which goes by his name, 
it is probable that he died soon after Jesus was thirteen 
years old. The rest of the family consisted of four brothers, 
and several sisters. They seem to have continued to live 
together, with Mary and with Jesus. The names of these 
“ brethren ” were James, and Joses, and Judas, and Simon. 

What was their exact relationship to Jesus? The Hel- 
vetian theory takes the language of the New Testament in 
its natural sense, and regards them as full brothers ; the Epi- 
phanian describes them as elder sons of Joseph by a pre- 
vious or a Levirate marriage ; the Hieronymian — which is 
the weakest and most foundationless — speaks of them as 
the cousins of Jesus. From the unvarying language of the 
Gospels about them, we might naturally infer that they 
were sons of Mary and her husband Joseph, born after 
the birth of Christ.* The belief in the Aeiparthenia, or 
perpetual virginity of the mother of Jesus, was an after- 
thought, unknown to the primitive Christians. It does not 
seem to have been turned into an actual dogma before the 
third century, f and even then there were some — called the 
Antidicomarianitce — who followed Helvidius in rejecting 
this new doctrine. It must be borne in mind that one of 


* See Luke ii. 7, xxiv. 10; John ii. 12, vii. 2-8, xix. 25 ; Mark iii. 21, 31, 
xv. 40 •; Matt, xxvii. 56, etc. 

f Hegesippus {fire. A. D. 160) speaks of them as brethren in the natural 
sense ; and Tertullian (a. d. 220) definitely states that they were (e. Marc. iv. 
19; De Cam. Ckristi 7; De Virg. Vel. 61). Origen, indeed, took the view 
that they were sons of Joseph by a former wife, but could only quote in favour 
of this view two heretical and apocryphal Gospels. For fuller information, see 
Bishop Lightfoot’s Essay on the Brethren of the Lord in his Commentary on 
the Galatians ; and Dr. J. B. Mayor in his Commentary on St. James ; and i» 
Hastings’ Diet, of the Bible , i. 320. I may also refer to ch. xix. of my Early 
Days of Christianity. 


I 12 


THE LIFE OF LIVES. 


the views most universally current among the Jews was the 
inherent duty and sanctity of marriage. To the earliest 
Christians it would have seemed no derogation whatever 
from the holy dignity of the Virgin, but rather the reverse, 
if she had added the sacredness of ordinary motherhood to 
the blessing of one who had been so highly favoured by the 
Lord. 

If, however, these four “ brethren of Jesus ” were not the 
sons of His mother, they can only have been (i.) either His 
cousins, or (ii.) the sons of Joseph by a previous or a 
Levirate marriage. 

The notion that they were the cousins of our Lord — sug- 
gested by St. Jerome only as a desperate expedient of argu- 
ment in which he himself hardly believed * — turns on the 
supposition that Mary, the wife of Cleopas (Alphaeus), was 
a sister of the Virgin, and that these were her four sons. 

That this Mary was a sister of the Virgin is on other 
grounds probable. The fact that two sisters should have 
borne the same name is by no means unprecedented, and it 
could not have been a very uncommon circumstance in days 
when distinctive names, especially of women, were extremely 
few in number. But it is fatal to this hypothesis (a) that 
no one ever seems to have heard of it before Jerome 
invented it ; and ( b ) that, if they were Christ’s cousins, 
there is no conceivable reason why the word ‘‘cousin” 
(aveipios), or “ kinsman ” (ffvyyev?}?), should not have been 
used of them,f nor why, without a single variation, they 
should have been called “ brethren and (c) that two, per- 
haps four, of the sons of Mary and Alphaeus were Apostles 
of Christ, so that it could not have been said, “ neither did 

* He first made the suggestion, without pretending to quote the least 
authority for it, about A. d. 383 ; but in later works (Ep. ad Hedibiam ), and in 
his Commentary on the Galatians, he holds very loosely to this view, and his 
arguments, such as they are, are beneath notice. 

t The word aveipioc occurs in Col. iv. 10 ; and of Symeon, son of Clopas, by 
Hegesippus, ap Euseb. H. E. iv. 22. For cvyytvijq, see Luke i. 36, ii. 44 ; 
John xviii. 26, etc. 


THE FAMILY AT NAZARETH. 113 

His brethren believe on Him.” On the other hand, if they 
were sons of Joseph by a Levirate marriage, they would not 
have been officially regarded as his sons, but rather as sons 
of his deceased brother. And if they were sons of Joseph 
by a previous marriage,* they, and not Jesus, were the 
elder heirs of David’s line. 

In calling them Christ’s “brethren” we adopt the lan- 
guage of the Evangelists, and there is no evidence to justify 
us in explaining it away out of deference to later fancies, 
which seem to be purely subjective, and derive no support 
of any kind from Scripture. If the “ Perpetual Virginity ” 
had been regarded as a doctrine of any importance the 
Evangelists would have guarded themselves against lan- 
guage so liable to misinterpretation as Matt. i. 24, Luke 
ii. 7. 

Of these brethren, the two of most marked individuality — 
the only two of whom any record survives — are James “the 
Lord’s brother,” and Jude the “ brother of James,” to each 
of whom we owe one of the Epistles of the New Testament. 

St. James was a man of most powerful and independent 
personality — pure and holy, yet with a certain natural 
sternness of character. If the traditions preserved by 
Hegesippusbe true, he had been a Nazarite from his birth, 
and the long locks of the Nazarite flowed over his shoul- 
ders. It is manifest from his Epistle that he was a devoted 
Jew. He addresses “ the sojourners of the Dispersion”; he 
speaks of the Christian assembly as “ a synagogue his 
mind was evidently steeped in Jewish literature, both 
Scriptural and Apocryphal. There is a tone of severity in 
his moral appeals and objurgations which recalls John the 

* This was the view of Epiphanius (a. d. 370). Pearson and others have 
■quoted Ezek. xliv. 2 in this connection, but nothing is more deplorable that 
this “ ever-widening spiral ergo from the narrow aperture of single texts.” 
If we are to quote the Old Testament in this matter, Ps. lxix. 8 would be much 
more apposite. This Psalm, treated as Messianic by St. John (ii. 17), and St. 
Luke (ii. 35), and St. Matthew (xxvii. 34), says: “ I have become a stranger to 
my brethren ; and an alien unto my mother’s children.” See Mayor /. c. 


THE LIFE OF LIVES. 


114 

Baptist. His Epistle is the least directly Christological in’ 
the New Testament, yet Luther made an utter mistake 
when he ventured to speak of it as a “ downright strawy 
Epistle.” One passage in it especially has the profoundest 
Gospel significance. It is the one in which he says, “ Put- 
ting away all filthiness and overflowing of wickedness,, 
receive with meekness the Implanted Word which is able 
to save your souls.” * 

Still the Epistle shows us one who, while he believed 
in the Lord Jesus Christ, had not broken loose from the 
traditions of Judaism. In this respect he carried out the 
early custom of St. Peter and St. John, who, being Jews,, 
after the Resurrection and after Pentecost still attended 
the Temple services. Indeed, it is clear, if we accept the 
story of Hegesippus, that St. James stood very high in the 
estimation of the Jews, who even called him Obliam, or 
“ The Bulwark of the People ” ( Ophel am). Yet so absolute 
was his fidelity to Christ, that, in His name and for His sake, 
he braved a martyr’s death (a. D. 62. ) f 

Of St. Jude, who modestly calls himself “the brother 
of James,” we know much less. Tradition has preserved 
no particulars respecting him, except that he was the grand- 
father of those descendants of David who were known as 
“ the Desposyni.” We have, however, St. Jude’s Epistle by 
which to form some estimate of his character. We find in 
it the same qualities of moral sternness as in that of his 
brother; and besides the evident traces of a strict Judaic 

* James i. 21. 

f See, on the death of St. Janies, Jos. Anti. xx. 9, 1 ; Orig. c. Cels. i. 47 ; 
Euseb. H. E. ii. 1, vii. 19. The well-known tradition of his martyrdom is 
given at length by Hegesippus (a. d. 160), quoted by Euseb. H. E. ii. 23. The 
story may come from an Ebionite book called ’A va^aB/xol 'lanufiov, of which 
there are traces in the Clementine Recognitions. The simpler story is given by 
Josephus (Anil. xx. 9). Comp. Orig. c. Cels. i. 47; Euseb. H. E. vii. 19. There 
is an interesting allusion to St. James in the spurious letter of Ignatius to St. 
John. “ The venerable James, who is surnamed Just, whom they relate to be 
very like Christ in appearance, in life, and in method of conduct, as if he were 
a twin brother of the same womb.” 


THE FAMILY AT NAZARETH. 


"5 


training, it contains uncommon allusions to Levitic institu- 
tions,* and the apocryphal legends of the Jewish Haggadah.\ 
Some of these are softened down in the rifacimento of the 
Epistle which we find in the second chapter of the Second 
Epistle of St. Peter. 

It is clear, then, that the family of Joseph was trained 
in the strictest traditions of Mosaism, and it is one of the 
numberless proofs of the Divine individuality of the Son of 
Man that He was not swayed by such near and powerful 
representatives of the Old Dispensation. There is not a 
whisper or a trace of any disagreement or disunion within 
the narrow limits of that humble home at Nazareth. But 
the testimony of the Evangelists shows that when our 
Lord began His mission, when he claimed the right to 
speak with authority, and not as the Scribes ; when He set 
aside the Oral Law, which his brethren had been taught to 
reverence as “ the tradition of the Elders ” ; when He openly 
broke with the all-venerated religious teachers of His day — 
His brethren were startled by the immensity of His claims. 
They even seem to have attributed them to a dangerous 
enthusiasm, for — dreading, perhaps, lest they should lead to 
some terrible catastrophe — they induced His mother to join 
them in the endeavour to put some gentle restraint on what 
they, with eyes as yet unenlightened, regarded as perilous 
impulses.^ 

And again, on a later occasion, His brethren tried to 
exercise an unwarrantable influence over His methods and 
actions, since their eyes were not yet opened to His Divine 
authority.§ They held to the current conceptions of the 
coming Messiah, and urged Him to go openly to the Feast 
of Tabernacles, and show His works, and claim his due posi- 

* Jude 8-23. f Jude 6, 9, 14. 

\ Matt. xii. 46 : Mark iii. 31, et-eoTij; Luke viii. 19. They were no doubt 
deeply troubled by the fact that the venerated Scribes said that He “had a 
demon,” and cast out demons by Beelzebul. Comp. Mark vi. 4 ; John vii. 20. 
Beelzebul seems to be the best attested reading. 

§ John vii. 3, 5, 10, 14. 


THE LIFE OF LIVES. 


1 16 

tion. He was compelled, therefore, to set aside their 
intrusiveness. He would not go to the Feast with them. 
He would not follow the wisdom or the ways of this world. 
He was compelled to repudiate their officiousness, and 
He did not take them into His confidence. He went up 
to Jerusalem, not officially, but privately, after they had 
departed, and did not appear in the Temple till the midst 
of the Feast. 

We see, however, clearly that if these “ brethren of the 
Lord ” were men of somewhat unbending convictions, they 
were nevertheless men of lofty moral character. They seem 
to have been convinced and converted by the Resurrection 
of Christ ; for though, during His ministry, they had not 
fully or adequately believed on Him, immediately after- 
wards we find them among his leading disciples. His 
brother James, though not one of the Twelve, was elected 
Bishop of Jerusalem after the martyrdom of James the son 
of Zebedee. St. Paul, among six appearances of the Risen 
Christ, mentions two only which are unrecorded in the 
Gospels. One of these is, “after that He appeared to 
James." * This has often been supposed to be the appear- 
ance, not to the son of Zebedee, but to the eldest brother 
of Jesus, which is mentioned in the Gospel according to the 
Hebrews, f We are told that, after the Crucifixion, \ James 
said that he would neither eat nor drink till he had seen 
Christ risen from the dead ; and that Christ, appearing to 
him, said, “ Eat and drink, my brother, for the Son of Man 
is risen from the dead.” 

The descendants of Jude, known as “members of the 
Lord’s family,” are mentioned in the famous story of the 

* i Cor. xv. 7. The separate appearance to Peter is not described in the 
Gospels. 

f Quoted by Jerome De Ver. ill. 2. 

X Or, i nanother version, “ from the hour in which he had drunk the cup of 
the Lord.” See Mayor, Ep. of St. James, xxxvii. n. See “ Gospel acc. to the 
Hebrews ap. Jer. De Vir, ill. 2. 


THE FAMILY AT NAZARETH. 117 

Emperor Domitian, who (a. D. 81), hearing from Josephus 
and from certain Nazarean heretics that some of the family 
of Christ in Palestine claimed royal descent, suspected that 
they might become possible leaders of sedition, and sent for 
them to come to Rome. But on seeing at a glance that 
they were only poor peasants whose hands were rough and 
hard with toil, and hearing from them that they only tilled 
seven acres of land, he contemptuously dismissed them to 
their humble Galilean farms.* 

In Christian History there is no more mysterious figure 
than that of THE MOTHER OF OUR LORD. In that car- 
penter’s shop at Nazareth what was her influence over the 
early years of her Divine Son ? 

After the events of the Nativity, the Virgin, strange to 
say, almost disappears, not only from the New Testament, 
but even from all the records of the Early Church. From 
the incident in the Temple when Jesus had completed His 
early boyhood, and from the fact that it was Mary, not 
Joseph, who addressed Him, we infer that her share in the 
training of His early years was more marked than was usual 
in the case of Jewish mothers. We see again in the “record 
of the first miracle at Cana that she occupied a leading 
position. There is no possible explanation of her remark 
to Christ, “ They have no wine" except that it was an 
indirect suggestion that by some word or deed of power 
He should prevent the joy of the wedding-feast from being 
destroyed by an apparent failure of the sacred duties of 
hospitality. His answer, “ Woman, what have I to do with 
thee ? mine hour is not yet come,” sounds to our ears far 
more harsh than it was. It set aside the right of Mary to 
direct His actions, yet was an implicit granting of her 
request. The address, “ Woman,” + in accordance with 

* Hegesippus ap. Eusebius, H. E. iii. 19-21. Julius Africanus (early in the 
third century) says that he knew some of the Desposyni personally. He was 
born at Emmaus. Euseb. H. E. i. 7. 

f John ii. 4, rt e/xoi aa'i ool yivai. In Aramaic this would be the common 


1 18 


THE LIFE OF LIVES. 


ancient idiom, was perfectly tender and respectful, and 
might be used even to Queens. * The “ what have I to do 
with thee?” spoken in tones of perfect gentleness, meant 
merely, “ This is a point which I must arrange, not thou.” 
The words might have been used by the most gentle and 
affectionate son of full age, to his mother. The direction 
immediately given by Mary to the servants shows that, so 
far from feeling any sense of a repulse, she anticipated the 
granting of her petition, which followed, without delay. 

The Virgin is prominently mentioned in the Gospels in but 
one other incident. It was on the occasion when she came 
with the Lord’s brethren to prevent, if possible, what they 
regarded as the continuance of a deeply imperilled career. 
Not only did Jesus decline to see them, but He uttered a 
remark which seemed most decisively to show that the time 
had now come when His work as the Son of God tran- 
scended all the earthly conditions of the Son of Man. 
Looking round on His assembled hearers at Capernaum, 
He exclaimed, “Who is My mother, and who are My 
brethren?” And stretching forth His hand towards His 
disciples, He said, “ Behold My mother and My brethren ! 
For whosoever shall do the will of My Father who is in 
heaven, he is My brother, and sister, and mother.” f 

Another incident tends still more strongly to emphasise 
our conviction that any form of what has been called 
“ Mariolatry ” is entirely alien from the teaching of the 
pure Gospel of Christ. Our Lord had been teaching in one 
of the synagogues, when a woman in the assembly, carried 
away by the intensity of her feelings, cried out in the hear- 
ing of all, “ Blessed is the womb that bare Thee, and the 
breasts which Thou hast sucked.” ^ But though that 

phrase, Mah li veldk , which is perfectly courteous. See 2 Sam. xvi. io, xix. 
22 ; i Kings xvii. 18 ; 2 Kings iii. 13, etc. 

*See John iv. 21, xix. 26, xx. 13, 15. Thus Augustus addressed Cleopatra 
in the words Qapoei yvvai (Dio. Cass. ii. p. 305). 

f Matt. xii. 46-50 ; Mark iii. 31-35. 


\ Luke xi. 27. 


THE FAMILY AT NAZARETH. 119 

might have seemed to be the most natural of sentiments, 
yet our Lord corrects its too material and human point of 
view. He systematically discouraged the exaltation of 
mere outward contact with His person, and taught that the 
presence of His Spirit was something nearer and more to be 
desired than any relationship with Him after the flesh (John 
xiv. 1 6, 2 Cor. v. 16). “ How many women have blessed the 

Holy Virgin/' says St. Chrysostom, “ and desired to be such 
a mother as she was ! What hinders them ? Christ has made 
for us a wide way to this happiness, and not only women but 
men may tread it — the way of obedience. This it is which 
makes such a mother, and not the throes of parturition.” 

The last time during His life on earth that the Virgin is 
mentioned is in the intensely pathetic incident when Jesus, 
as He hung upon His Cross of Shame, saw His mother 
standing by, and the disciple whom He loved. Thoughtful, 
even at that supreme moment, for her desolate future, He 
said, indicating by a movement of His head the Beloved 
Disciple, “ Woman, behold thy son ! ” and to John, “ Behold 
thy mother ! ” She had now drunk to the very dregs the 
cup of anguish. John led her away, and from that hour 
took her to his own home. In the surmises of which the 
Lives of Christ are full, this incident has been much dis- 
cussed. I think the answer to any difficulty lies in some 
obvious considerations. St. John was “the disciple whom 
Jesus loved,” and was His kinsman. Having been admitted 
into Christ’s closest and most tender friendship, he would 
be more likely to enter into the unspeakable depth of Mary’s 
feelings than the “ brethren ” who, up to that time, had 
never fully accepted His Divine claims. Then again there 
are indications that St. John was in a somewhat less strug- 
gling worldly position than the sons of Joseph the car- 
penter. Unlike “ the brethren of the Lord,” he was un- 
married. He was familiar with Jerusalem, and probably 
had a home there, in which, according to one tradition, the 
Virgin lived from that time until her death. 


120 


THE LIFE OF LIVES. 


From this moment the Virgin Mary, though her name 
is just mentioned among those who formed the assemblies 
of the early believers, practically disappears from Christian 
History.* Even apocryphal tradition scarcely so much as 
mentions her. It is not known how long she lived. It is 
not certain whether she died at Jerusalem or at Ephesus. 
She is not referred to as a source of information, still less 
as a fount of authority, though she could have told more 
than any living being about the birth of the Saviour, and the 
thirty long years of His humble obscurity. She “kept all 
these and pondered them in her heart.” But though 
she must ever be cherished in Christian reverence as the 
chosen handmaid of the Lord, and “ blessed among women,” 
it is impossible not to see in these indisputable facts the 
strongest possible condemnation of that utterly unauthor- 
ised worship of the Virgin, which centuries afterwards, 
began to corrupt the turbid stream of Christianity. As 
though by a Divine prevision of the dangerous aberrations 
which were to come, in which Christians by millions were 
taught to adore the creature even more than the Creator, 
who is blessed for evermore, the name Mary is scarcely 
noticed in the whole New Testament after the beginning of 
Christ’s ministry, and indeed after the one incident of His 
boyhood. In three of the instances in which it is introduced, 
our Lord says, “ Woman, what have I to do with thee ? ” ; 
“ He that doeth the will of God the same is my mother, 
and my sister, and my brother ” ; and, “ Yea rather, blessed 
are they that do the word of God and keep it.” It might, 
therefore, seem as if special care had been taken to dis- 
courage and obviate the corrupted forms of Christianity 

* Epiphanius {Haer. lxxviii. n) knew nothing on the subject. Nicephorus 
{H. E. ii. 3) is no authority, for he lived in the middle of the fourteenth cen- 
tury. He says that she died at Jerusalem, aged 59, eleven years after the Cru- 
cifixion. There was a tradition, mentioned in a letter of the Council of Ephe- 
sus (A. D. 431), that she went with St. John to Ephesus and was buried there. 
(See Westcott on John xix. 2,4.) A supposed “ Tomb of the Virgin ” is 
shown at Jerusalem, near the traditional Gethsemane. 


THE FAMILY AT NAZARETH. 


I 2 I 


which have thrust the Virgin Mary into the place of her 
Eternal Son, and made her more an object of rapturous 
worship than God, to whom alone all worship is due. 


Here we may perhaps revert for a moment to the ques- 
tion on which I have already spoken elsewhere, as to the 
human aspect of the Lord of Life. The early Christians 
— looking almost daily for the visible return of Christ in 
glory, and habitually regarding Him, no longer as “the 
Man Christ Jesus,” who for a few short years moved about 
upon this earth, but rather as the Divine, the Eternal, the 
ever-present God — have preserved for us no outline of a 
picture, not even so much as a passing tradition, of His ap- 
pearance as a man among men.* The early Christians — 
feeling that He was with them, and within them, and that 
He was “ God of God, Lord of Lords, very God of very 
God ” — cared nothing for relics, or holy places, or semblances 
of His mortal face. Hence, as far back as the second century, 
nothing whatever was knozvn which could even decide the 
question whether He was tall and stately and humanly 
beautiful, or whether He was the very reverse. Ancient 
writers could only fall back on the language of Prophecy. 
Among the Greek Fathers and the earlier Latin writers the 
tendency was to borrow the conception of His earthly 
aspect from the prophecies of Isaiah (lii. 14, liii. 23), and 
to speak of Him as “ without form or comeliness,” inglori- 
ous, nay, even mean in appearance, “ short, ignoble, ill- 
favoured in body.” f But later on it began to be felt that 
such notions were utterly untenable. We may safely infer 
from the Gospels themselves that there must have been 
some grandeur about the appearance of Jesus — “ Sidereum 

* For full further information on these questions see my Life of Christ in 
Art. See, too, Ullmann, p. 191 ; Schurer, II. ii, 161. 

t See the well-known passages : Just. Mart. Dial. 14, 36, 85, 88 ; Clem. 
Alex. Paed. iii. 1,3; and others quoted on next page. 


122 


THE LIFE OF LIVES. 


quiddam ,” as St. Jerome says — which on many occasions 
won His friends and overawed His enemies.* No one who 
had lived a life of sinless innocence and the supremest 
moral nobleness could be otherwise than “ fairer than the 
children of men ” (Ps. xlv. 3). This was the view of Jerome 
and Augustine, and it became established in the Church of 
the West, though Byzantine art continued to depict Him 
in traditional ugliness. 

The two late descriptions of Jesus — that by the pseudo 
Publius Lentulus, preserved by John of Damascus in the 
eighth, and that by Nicephorus in the fourteenth century — 
are very beautiful, but purely ideal. All that we may be 
sure of is that if “ beauty ” be “ the sacrament of goodness,” 
the Sinless Purity of the Son of Man could not but have 
created for itself a noble Presence, and a Countenance full 
of all human sweetness and all Divine dignity. It is certain 
that pretended likeness of Christ originated among heretics 
like the Carpocratians (Iren. i. 25), and we must still say 
generally with St. Augustine, f* Qua fuerit Ille facie , 
penitus ignoramus .” f It must be remembered that St. 
Augustine gave this decisive judgment when hundreds of 
pretended likenesses were in existence, all of which, he 
says, differed most widely from each other. 


And now the greater part of Christ’s human life had 
passed. The long thirty years were over. As yet He had 
wrought no miracle, had given no sign, had uttered no 
revelation of the Divine claims which were part of the 

teaching destined to revolutionise the world. He had lived 

♦ 

* See, for instances, Matt. vii. 28, xiii. 54, xix. 25 ; Mark ix. 15 ; Luke ii. 
47- etc. 

f Jer. Ep. lxv. in Matt. ix. 9 ; Aug. De Erin, viii. 4, 5. See Gieseler, i. 66 ; 
W. H. Lecky, Hist, of Rationalism, i. 257 ; Kugler,/ft'j 7 . of Art, i. 15, 16. The 
chief authorities are Clem. Alex. Paedag . iii. 1, Strom, ii. p. 308 ; Tert. De 
Came Christi, 9. c. Jud. 14; Orig. c. Cels. vi. 327 ; Euseb. H. E. vii. 15. 


THE FAMILY AT NAZARETH. 


123 


unknown and unnoticed, in the small Galilean town, as an 
ordinary and humble mechanic, not challenging any place 
among its provincial aristocracy, not interfering even with 
the extremely modest prerogatives of the officials in its 
synagogue. He had fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah : 

“ He shall not strive, nor cry aloud; 

Neither shall any one hear His voice' in the streets. 

A bruised reed shall He not break. 

And smoking flax shall He not quench, 

Till He send forth judgment unto victory." 

We may here sum up the deep lessons involved in these 
long years of obscure and silent labour. They involve in 
the most striking of all possible forms a testimony to the 
value and sacredness of the ordinary ‘life of man. They 
were destined to furnish the most vivid possible proof that 
the life is more than the food, and the body than the 
raiment ; that God created man for incorruption, and made 
him an image of His own everlastingness ; that to receive 
Him into the soul is perfect righteousness, and to know 
His dominion is the root of immortality. The lot of all but 
the very few in every million of human beings is the lot of 
struggleand obscurity. The Psalmist sang, ages ago, that 

“ As for man, his days are as grass, 

As a flower of the field, so he flourisheth. 

For the wind passeth over it and it is gone, 

And the place thereof shall know it no more." 

Christ came to live, in all external respects, the commonest 
life of man, that the multitude might not regard their 
lives as mere stubble of the field, and themselves as things 
of no account with God, because they constitute but 

“ Of men, the common rout 
That, wandering loose about, 

Grow up and perish, as the summer fly ; 

Heads without name, no more remembered." 


124 


THE LIFE OF LIVES. 


For the life which they live, in its namelessness and little 
apparent value to mankind, was the very life lived by the 
Son of God Himself, the Lord of Glory, for all but the 
brief years of His ministry. It sufficed Him, and He 
thereby taught us how infinite is the inherent preciousness 
of life itself, apart from those concomitants of pride, suc- 
cess, and riches, which to many men seem alone to make it 
worth living. Tried by the world’s standard, our existence 
may seem deplorably insignificant ; but what is taught us 
by the thirty years passed in the shop of the Nazarene car- 
penter by “ the Lord of Time and all the worlds,” is that 
each man has a right to say with humble faith : 

“ All I could never be, 

All men ignored in me, 

This was I worth to God, whose wheel the pitcher shaped.” * 

And in all the early years of His life, with their experi- 
ences and meditations, Jesus looked far more on what is 
good in human nature than on what is evil. He became 
filled more and more with a boundless compassion for man, 
springing from absolute love for God. “ Here,” says Keim, 
“ we are made aware in Him of an ascending effort to get 
beyond the boundaries of the natural, beyond the limita- 
tions of human nature ; — a renunciation of the whole world, 
a feeling of the nothingness of riches, and of the utter 
helplessness of all human existence which lives but from 
the alms, and crumbs, of the Eternal : but yet, instead of 
the leap of self-annihilation, the plunging of man’s nothing- 
ness into God’s Eternity — a profound repose of the creature 
in itself; an inward contemplation of inward riches along 
with outward neediness ; a joyful recognition of the bright 
light and everlasting worth of a human soul ; a self-confir- 
mation in the right to endless existence ; and belief in the 
personal elevation and dignity of mankind at large, in such 
strength of conviction as had never been before, and as 

* Browning, Rabbi Ben Ezra . 


THE FAMILY AT NAZARETH. 125 

became henceforth the motive-power of all the future life of 
humanity. ” * Even the most abject and wretched were, in 
Christ’s apprehension, still sons and daughters of Abraham, 
still children of the Heavenly Father, of the true and ever- 
lasting God. 

It was Christ’s intense realisation of God’s infinitude of 
love which raised Him into the all-embracing love of Man. 
It was His sense of the infinite grandeur of the Divine Per- 
fection which made Him insist on the nature of true 
worship as consisting in a communion of the soul with God. 
The self-deceiving littlenesses of a theatrical externalism 
hinder rather than promote the depth of that communion 
of man with God which uplifts our souls at last into that 
mystery wherein God in man is one with man in God. 

*Keim, ii. 170. See Matt, vii, 9-n. 


CHAPTER XII. 


THE CONDITION OF THE WORLD. 

“ In whatsoever I may find you, in this will I also judge you.” — Un- 
written Saying of Christ. Clem. Horn. ii. 5. Just. Mart. Dial. 47. 

“ Divina Providentia agitur mundus et homo.” — OROSIUS. 

“ No incident in the Gospel story, no word in the teaching of Jesus 
Christ, is intelligible apart from its setting in Jewish History, and with- 
out a clear understanding of that world of thought distinctive of the 
Jewish People.” — SCHURER, Hist, of the Jewish People , Div. 1, Vol. 1, 
p. 1. 

But the time had now come, when, in fulfilment of the 
mission which was to regenerate mankind and to inaugu- 
rate the last aeon of the Divine Dispensation, Christ had to 
reveal Himself to the world. Nazareth, secluded as it was, 
was in a central position for observing the movements and 
tendencies of the age. The Galileans — an eager and emo- 
tional race — were in constant contact with Jerusalem and 
Samaria, and their hearts thrilled to the religious questions 
of the day. They were within a short distance from 
Decapolis, and the heathen or semi-heathen cities of Sep- 
phoris, Hippos, Bethsaida Julias, and Tiberias. Not far 
from them, in the plain of Esdraelon, was an encampment 
of Roman soldiers, which still retains the name of “ Legion ” 
(Lejjun). They were under the dominance of the meanest 
of the Herods, and were well aware that their political 
existence was ultimately dependent on the will of those 
whom Herod the Great had called “ the almighty Romans” 
and their deified Emperors. From the hill-top of Nazareth 
was visible the blue Mediterranean traversed by “ the ships of 
Chittim ” — the narrow and open pathway to the Greek and 
Asiatic world and the Isles of the Gentiles. And though 

126 


CONDITION OF THE WORLD. 127 

there is no proof that Nazareth itself was in any sense a 
centre of commercial activity, it was within easy access of 
the roads from Damascus to the sea, the great Southern 
road which led ultimately to Egypt, and the Eastern road 
which led from Acre to Bethlehem.* In the festal visits 
to Jerusalem Jesus must have mingled among crowds in 
which there were “ Parthians, and Medes, and Elamites, 
and dwellers in Mesopotamia, in Judaea and Cappadocia, in 
Pontus and Asia, in Phrygia and Pamphylia, in Egypt and 
the parts of Libya about Cyrene, Alexandrians and Cilicians, 
and sojourners from Rome, both Jews and Proselytes, 
Cretans and Arabians.” A Passover crowd in the Temple 
Courts was an epitome of the civilised world. 

Jesus must, therefore, have often meditated on the general 
conditions of the life of His day, both among the Jews and 
among the Gentiles. And the epoch was a deplorable one. 
The darkness was deepest before the approach of dawn. 

I. THE GENTILES. 

As regards the Gentile world, no epoch could have been 
worse, no period more deeply plunged into the Dead Sea 
of corruption, or more despairingly conscious of its own 
moral degradation. The mimes of Paganism reeked with 
moral corruption, and the sanguinary amphitheatres were 
schools of callous cruelty.f Infanticide was so universal 
that a senator challenged the members of a full Senate to 
say whether nearly every one of them had not exposed 
infant children to die.. Their very religion was corrupt at 
the fountain-head. The pictures in the Temples, and the 
representations of stories of their religious mythology, were 
potent sources of corruption, such as even light poets 

* See G. A. Smith, Hist. Geogr. of the Holy Land , 413-463. 
f Juv. Sat. vi. 67 ; Mart. De Spectac. 7 ; Sen. Ep . 7 ; Tert. Apol. 15 ; ad 
Hat. i. 11. See Zosimus, Hist. i. 6. Offences against moral purity were 
regarded even by philosophers as “ matters of indifference” ( adidyopa ). 


128 


THE LIFE OF LIVES. 


observed and bewailed ; * and the dark mysterious recesses 
of consecrated shrines were scenes of gross demoralisation^ 
The old Roman virtues had been quenched, partly in 
consequence of the closer contact of Rome with Greek 
immorality, partly because the dead weight of military 
despotism, as represented by the Emperors, had crushed 
out the old freedom and nobleness. A highborn Roman 
historian, Cremutius Cordus, was driven to suicide in the 
days of Tiberius for speaking of Cassius as “ the last of the 
Romansl'% The age was under no illusion as to its own 
degeneracy, and it was pervaded by the gloomiest dread. § 
The lowest of the mob were conscious of the unsurpassable 
abominations which ran riot in the recesses of the palace, 
and were envied and reproduced, not only in the houses of 
the great senators, but even in those of the middle class. 
How could any nobleness or purity survive the sway of 
adored and deified monsters such as Tiberius, Caligula, 
Nero, Vitellius, Otho, and Domitian ? Was ever a more 
deplorable picture drawn of a state of morals rotten to its 
inmost depths, than that delineated by such historians as 
Tacitus and Suetonius? The picture which our Lord drew 
in one of His last discourses, of wars and tumults, of 
nations in perplexity for the roaring of the sea and the 
billows, and of men fainting for fear and expectation of the 
things which are coming on the world,! is the exact parallel 
of the description of the same epoch by Tacitus as one 
“ rich in disasters, savage with battles, rent with factions, 
cruel even in peace ; the swallowing up or overthrow of 
cities, the pollution of sacred functions, the prevalence of 
adulteries, the corruption of slaves against their masters, of 

* Propert. Eleg. ii. 5, 19-26. « 

f Tert. Apol. 15 ; Minucius Felix, Octav. 25 ; Ovid Ars. Amat. i. 77, iii. 
393 ; Firmicus De err. prof. rel. iv. p. 64 ; Rufinus, H. E. xii. 24, cited by 
Dollinger, Judenth. u. Heidenth. p. 644. 

% Tac. Ann. iv. 34. 

§See Tac. Ann. vi. 28-51, H. i. 3. 

II Matt. xxiv. 3-14 ; Luke xxi. 10-28. 


CONDITION OF THE WORLD. 


129 


freedmen against their patrons, and, when there was no 
open enemy, the ruin of friends by friends.” * Could any- 
thing be more debased w than the tone of vileness unblush- 
ingly presented by Juvenal, Martial, and Petronius? 
Already, in the better days of Augustus, Horace had sung : 

“ Damnosa quid non imminuit dies? 

Aetas parentum pejor avis dabit 
Nos nequiores, mox daturos 
Progeniem vitiosiorem.” f 

Bad as his age was, the poet thought it might conceivably 
be worse, and prophesied for future generations a still 
more irredeemable decadence. But Juvenal, in the days 
of Nero, with no conscious reference to what Horace had 
said, wrote that wickedness had now reached its absolute 
culmination, and that though future generations might be 
as bad as his was, they could not be more vile. 

“ Nil erit ulterius quod nostris moribus addat 
Posteritas ; eadem cupient, facientque minores 
Omne in praecipiti vitium stetit.”J 

Their hideous taurobolies and kriobolies — of which the first 
trace is found on an inscription, A. D. 133 — were but vain 
outward forms of expiation, which neither diminished the 
violence of their passions, nor cooled the anguish of their 
accusing consciences. Judaism did not reach them. They 
fancied that the Jews were descended from lepers who had 
been driven out of Egypt ; that they worshipped, some 
said an ass, and others the clouds of heaven ; that they 
were a nation of cheats and liars ; that they kept Sabbaths 
on pretence of superstition, but solely as an excuse for 
idleness ;§ and that they hated all men, as all men hated 
them. 

* Tac. Hist. 1, 2. f Hor. Od. iii. vi. 45. t J uv - Sat * 148. 

§On these ignorant misapprehensions, even of cultivated heathen writers, 
see Tac. H. v. 2, etc.; Juv. Sat. xiv. 96 ; Strabo, xvi. p. 670; Aug. Civ. Dei 
vi. 1 ; Tert. Apol. 23 ; Dollinger, Judenth. u. Heidenth. p. 628. 


130 


THE LIFE OF LIVES. 


i 


And the anguish of retribution was equal to the wicked- 
ness of universal abandonment to vile affections. Inso- 
lence, arrogance, greed, and the superabundance of fla- 
gitiousness, filled Rome with whisperers, liars, slanderers, 
professional informers — of whom some, to the common 
terror, exercised their infernal • trade openly, others 
secretly.* The Emperor Tiberius had sunk to the lowest 
depths of degradation in his sty at Capreae, as an ‘‘inventor 
of evil things," so that new words had to be coined to 
describe his vileness ;f and he was, as even Pliny says of 
him, “ notoriously the most wretched of mankind." He 
himself wrote to his Senate, “ What to write, or how to 
write to you, Conscript Fathers, or what not to write, at 
the present moment, may all the gods and goddesses 
destroy me worse than I feel myself to be daily perishing,, 
if I know." J The comment of the stern historian on those 
words is that his crimes and enormities turned to his own 
punishment; that neither his splendour nor his solitude 
saved him from suffering the torments and penalties which 
he confessed ; and that he illustrated the wise remark that,, 
if the minds of tyrants could be laid open to view, they 
would be as visibly lacerated by the scourges of cruelty,, 
lust, and wicked counsels as bodies are by the lash. 

This awful condition of things created an unspeakable 
weariness of life ;§ and so deep was the conviction that 
the life of men is but a matter of indifference, or even 
a constant comedy in the eyes of the gods,|| that suicide 
was no longer regarded as a crime, but had come to be 
looked upon as a sign of moral nobleness. Nor are these 
the rhetorical exaggerations of poets, historians, and 
satirists. Seneca was a grave philosopher, and one who 
tried to be sincere, and he wrote, “ He who denies that we 
may forcibly end our life, does not see that he is closing the 

*Tac. Ann. vi. 7. f Tac. Ann . vi. 1 ; Rom. i. 30. 

JTac. Ann. vi. 6. §Tac. Ann. iv. 1, xvi. 16 ; Cic. de Off. i. 4-18^ 

|| Tac. Ann. iii. 18. 


CONDITION OF THE WORLD. 


* 3 * 

path of liberty. The eternal law hath done nothing better 
than that it has given us one entrance to life, but many 
exits.” 

Self-murder was belauded as an act of real magnanimity 
by many, both of Greeks and Romans.* Even an Epicte- 
tus and a Marcus Aurelius did not rise above this point of 
view.t Not a few who were counted by the Greeks and 
Romans among their noblest sons had died by their own 
hands, and among them such philosophers as Zeno and 
Kleanthes. “ Having gone through every species of 
wickedness,” says Theophylact, “ Human Nature needed 
to be healed.” 

Thus the Gentiles are convicted out of the mouths of 
their own writers, and it is proved that when St. Paul, in 
the first chapter of the Epistle to the Romans, drew, in 
such deep dark lines, the sketch of Pagan wickedness, and 
showed how the heathen had “ become vain in their reason- 
ings and their senseless heart was darkened,” and how they 
were given up to passions of dishonour and reprobate 
uncleanness, he was not actuated by feelings of national or 
religious hatred, but was speaking, with holy dignity, the 
words of soberness and truth. The worst fact about them 
was that they were “ past feeling ” ; they had felt once, but 
now were “ hardened in wickedness.”^: 

II. THE JEWS. 

Nor must it be supposed that this leprosy of Pagan 
wickedness was visible only in great Roman centres and 
heathen lands. There were many Gentiles, and large 
contingents of soldiers, in Palestine,! and the wickedness 

*See Ep. lviii. 34, Ixxvii.; Plin. Epp. 3, 7. 

f Epict. Diss. i. 25,. ii. 2 ; Marc. Aurel. v. 9, viii. 47, x. 8. 

\ Eph. iv. 19, amj^yriKOTeg. See, for further proofs, Dollinger, The Jew and 
the Gentile ; Renan, L' Antichrist ; and my Seekers after God, pp. 36-53. 

§ Since the year A. d. 63, when Pompey had entered Jerusalem with his 
army, Palestine had been under the dominance of Rome. Even in the days 


1 3 2 


THE LIFE OF LIVES. 


of ‘ them that knew not God ” was not restrained by con- 
tact with Judaism. The stories told of things done by 
Roman soldiers, even in Jerusalem; their close alliance, in 
the days of Felix, with the murderous Sicarii ; the cruel 
slaughters of the defenceless in which they took a share ; 
the act of gross indecency openly displayed for purposes of 
insult by a Roman legionary in sight of all the worshippers 
in the Temple at a great festival ; the abominable deeds of 
brutalism enacted by the soldiers and people after the death 
of Agrippa, in the cities of Caesarea and Sebaste* — are 
incidents which sufficiently prove that the contagion of 
heathendom was diffused even into the Holy Land. 

Herod the Great and his sons were open patrons of 
idolatry everywhere but in J erusalem. They were not J ews 
at all. Herod, who came to the throne in A. D. 39, and held 
it for thirty-seven years, was the son of an Edomite father 
and an Arabian mother. He could afford to defy the 
shuddering hatred of the Jews so long as by flattering sub- 
servience and supple complaisance he could retain the 
favour of his Roman lords. These aliens built temples, in 
the Holy Land itself, to heathen deities and to deified 
Emperors. Herod the Great had even introduced into the 
Holy City the looseness of the theatre and the sanguinary 
ferocity of the gladiatorial games. Herod Philip, the 
tetrarch of Ituraea, ruled as a heathen among heathens. 
He stamped his coinage with the temple of Augustus, and 
the laureated effigies of Augustus and Tiberius, and he 
called the town of Bethsaida “Julias” in honour of the 
infamous daughter of Augustus. Besides this it was uni- 
versally known, nor was there even a pretence at conceal- 
ing the fact, that the darkest vices of fallen humanity were 
practised in the Herodian palaces ; and that Herod’s sons, 
while still mere youths, had carried back with them from 

of the Maccabees there were tt 6 hu<; in the boundaries of Judaea 

{2 Macc. vi. 8). 

*Jos. Antt. xix. 9, 1. 


CONDITION OF THE WORLD. 


*33 


Rome, where they were educated, sins which the Mosaic 
law punished with death. So deeply indeed had this con- 
tamination sunk that, for the sake of political dominance, 
Alexandra, the mother of the beautiful Mariamne and of 
the young High Priest Aristobulos, had, with the worst pur- 
poses, sent the likenesses of her son and daughter to the 
lewd Mark Antony, in order that she might secure an influ- 
ence over him by means of his most shameless depravities. 
And this was the family which, under the protection first 
of the Triumvirate, and then of Augustus and Tiberius, 
held in their hands the autocracy of the Land of Israel ! 

Philip, the tetrarch of Itursea, was the only one of the 
Herodian family who was unstained by crimes of lust and 
bloodshed ; and he, as we have seen, was an open patron of 
a decadent idolatry. It was in vain for the Rabbis to pro- 
test against the Chokmath Javanith , or “ Greek science,” 
and to say that, since men ought to study the Law day and 
night, Hellenic books could only be studied at some time 
which was neither day nor night.* Hellenism, in its liter- 
ary aspect, deeply affected the views even of Philo ; in its 
practical influences it was felt not only throughout the 
Dispersion, but in large areas of Palestine itself. In the 
palace of Herod the Great were to be found cultivated 
Hellenists like Nicolas of Damascus, a man of most versa- 
tile ability, and time-serving fortune hunters of the “ Grce- 
culus esuriens ” type, and even a youth like Carus, who 
represented the lowest decadence of heathen immorality 
and shame.f There were still righteous and holy men 
among the Jews; yet very shortly after the days of Christ, 
St. Paul, a Hebrew of the Hebrews, draws a very dark pic- 
ture of the moral condition of his countrymen, and accuses 
them of imposture, impurity, and theft. He says of the 
Jews: “They please not God, and are contrary to all 
men ” ; and adds that though they professed “ to dis- 

* Menachoth, p. 992. Derenbourg, p. 361. 

f Jos. Anti. xvii. 2, 4. 


134 


THE LIFE OF LIVES. 


criminate the transcendent,” they caused the Name of God 
to be blasphemed among the Gentiles.* The Pharisees 
thought so lightly of the mass of their own people as to 
call them “ accursed. ”f The Roman writers attach to the 
name of Jew such epithets as “ gens sceleratissima , teterrima Y 
projectissima ad libidinem."% Their own historian Josephus 
declares that the nation had become so wicked and depraved 
that the Holy City would have been swallowed up by an 
earthquake, or overthrown by Sodomitic lightning, had not 
the Romans executed judgment upon it.§ Divorce had 
become disgracefully common. Adultery was so rife that 
pretexts had to be devised for getting rid of the fearful 
ordeal of “the water of jealousy.” Judaism had become a 
“ sentina iniquitatis ,” and Jerusalem was a “ laniena pro- 
phetarum .” 

III. THE DISPERSION. 

If Heathendom brought its taint into the Promised Land 
of the People of the Covenant, it might have been hoped 
that the vast majority of the Jewish nation, now known as 
the Galootha , or Dispersion,! which was scattered through- 
out the civilised world, would have disseminated some 
higher moral ideals and some knowledge of the true God. 
It is to be feared that this was not the case. In Rome 
itself, since Pompey (B. c. 63) had brought back with him 
his multitude of captives, there had been a large and for- 
midable colony of Jews in the Imperial city, where their 
ancient burial-places ( columbaria ) may still be seen.T They 

* Rom. ii. 17-29, ix. 3 ; i Thess. ii. 21. f John vii. 49. 

X Seneca, ap. Aug. Civ. Dei vi. 11 ; Tac. Hist. v. 5, 8 ; Ann . ii. 85 ; Suet. 
Tiber. 36. 

. § Keim i. 314 ; Jos. B. J. v. 13, 6, x. 5, vii. 8, 1. 

| Only a handful of Jews — likened by their own writers to the chaff in com- 
parison with the wheat — returned with Ezra to Palestine, Kiddushin , 69, 2. 
See Hershon, Genesis acc. to the Talmud , p. 246. 

T The Sibylline verses say that “every land and every sea was filled with 
Jews ” ( Orac . Sibyll. iff. 271), and Strabo, that they had come into every city 


CONDITION OF THE WORLD. 135 

were so numerous as at times to create real alarm, and they 
made themselves specially terrible to returning Provincial 
Governors who had treated their compatriots with severity. 
In Cicero’s days they assembled in the Forum in such 
threatening crowds that in B. C. 59 he had to deliver his 
speech in favour of Flaccus — who was obnoxious to them — 
in a tone of voice too low for them to hear.* Julius Caesar 
had always been their friend, and their mourning ceremo- 
nies after his murder were expressive of such unrestrained 
grief as to amaze the people of the city.f Tiberius had 
multitudes of them impressed into the army, and sent to the 
pestilential regions of Sardinia, in accordance with a uni- 
versal feeling that if they all perished by malaria it would 
be a very cheap loss. Claudius passed an edict which ex- 
pelled them all from Rome because they were continually 
rioting “ under the impulse of Christus.”;): They did indeed 
make some proselytes, but almost exclusively among women. 
Josephus claims Poppaea, the wife of Nero, as a Jewish prose- 
lyte^ But two circumstances prevented Jews from exer- 
cising a beneficent influence over their heathen neighbours. 
One was the impression they made of being the devotees 
of a superstition which gave them no moral superiority. 
Cicero calls their religion “ a barbarous superstition,” and 
the elder Pliny brands them as “noted fora contempt of 
the gods.” Coarser stories spoke of them as a nation who 
worshipped the head of an ass.|| The vile cheating prac- 

(ap. Jos. Antt. xiv. 7, 2 ; SchUrer div. ii. vol. ii. p. 321). They were most 
numerous in Egypt and Cyrene. St. Paul found Jewish synagogues not only 
throughout Asia Minor, but in Thessalonica, Beroea, Athens, Corinth (Acts 
xvii. xviii.), Crete, and Rome. 

* Cic. Pro Flacco , 28. 

f Sueton. Cces. 84. In b. c. 4 eight thousand Jews of Rome met the deputa- 
tion which came from Jerusalem to denounce the Herods. 

\ Suet. Claud. 25 ; Acts xviii. 2. 

§ Jos. Antt. xx. 8; Vit. 3. On the whole subject, see Schurer ii. vol. ii. § 31. 

| Tac. Hist. v. 2-4, 13 ; Anti. ii. 85 ; Suet. Tib. 36 ; Pliny, H. N. iii. 4 ; 
Juv. Sat. xiv. 97 ; Pers. v. 184 ; Plut. Sympos. iv. 5, 6 ; Justin xxxvi. 1, 2 ; 


THE LIFE OF LIVES. 


136 

tised on a Roman lady in Rome in the reign of Nero 
greatly deepened the hatred felt for them.* They were 
: jgarded as beggars, swindlers, and sacrilegious robbers ; and 
were believed to alienate to their private use the sums of 
money which were contributed as the “ Temple didrachm.” 

The other impediment to their influence rose from their 
attitude of habitual disdain and hatred for those around 
them.f “ Adversus omnes alios" says Seneca, “ hostile 
odium." St. Paul, with inspired insight, lays his finger on 
both sources of failure. “They are contrary to all men,”| 
he says in his letter to the Thessalonians ; and in the Epis- 
tle to the Romans he turns on the self-satisfied Jews with 
a series of crushing questions. § “ Thou therefore that 

teachest another, teachest thou not thyself? Thou that 
teachest that a man should not steal, dost thou steal ? Thou 
that abhorrest idols, dost thou rob temples? Thou that 
makest thy boast in the Law, through breaking the Law 
dishonourest thou God?” We see, then, that the Jews as 
a nation had shown themselves false to the high ideal 
which had been set before them. Their religion was 
nothing more than a decrepit survival. They had failed to 
accomplish the mission which intended them to be the 
moral and religious teachers of the ancient world. Josephus 
says (B.J. v.-vi. 10) that no age had ever bred a genera- 
tion more fruitful in wickedness since the beginning of 
the world. 


Philostr. Apoll. Tycan. v. II. Comp. Jos. Ap. i. 14, ii. 4-6 ; Rutilianus, i. 
887. “ Humanis animal dissociate cibis. Reddimus obscenae convicia debita 

genti.” Tert. Apol. 16, etc. 

* Suet. Nero. 32. Hence St. Paul’s questions, “ Thou that abhorrest idols, 
dost thou rob temples ? ” The notorious case had been that in which some Jews 
swindled the Roman lady Fulvia (Jos. Antt. xviii. 3, 5). 

f They applied to the Gentiles, Ezek. xxiii. 20, “whose flesh is as the flesh of 
a 'ses.” Many fierce and contemptuous passages against Gentiles might be 
quoted from the Talmud. See Rosh Hashanah, f. 17, 1 (Hershon, Talm. 
Miscell. p. 155). 

\ 1 Thess. ii. 15. 


§ Rom. ii. 17-29. 


CONDITION OF THE WORLD. 137 


IV. THE SAMARITANS. 

Within the limits of the Holy Land itself there were 
three closely connected yet often widely antagonistic 
nationalities — the Jews, the Samaritans, and the Galileans. 

The Samaritans were a people of mongrel origin. They 
had sprung from the mixture of the Israelitish population 
with immigrants sent into the ancient territory of the kings 
of Israel by Shalmaneser, king of Assyria, after his capture 
of Samaria.* At first these immigrants had continued the 
forms of idolatry to which they had been accustomed ; but 
on the devastation of the land by lions they asked the king 
of Assyria to have a priest sent to them who should teach 
them “ the religion of the God of the land.” This was 
done, and they learned to worship Jehovah, though their 
various communities mingled His worship with that of all 
sorts of idols, f Nerjal and Ashimah, Nibhaz and Tartuk, 
Adrammelech and Ananmelech. The Jews looked askance 
upon them, and called them by the contemptuous name of 
“lion-proselytes” and “ Cuthaeans ,” X and “ that foolish 
people that dwell in Sichem.”§ Gradually, however, the 
descendants of these settlers and the original people of the 
land shook off the old idolatries, accepted Mosaism, claimed 
the special heritage of Jacob, and built a Temple on Mount 
Gerizim, which they (perhaps rightly) regarded as the scene 
of Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac,! and of the meeting of Abra- 

* 2 Kings xviii. 9, 12-24. The new settlers came from Babylon, Cuthah, 
Ava, Hamath, Sepharvaim. 

f Some most gratuitously see an allusion to this fivefold worship in John iv. 
18 : “ Thou hast had five husbands.” 

X Cuthim—so they are called throughout the Mislina ; and see Jos. Antt. ix. 
14, 3, xi. 4, etc. Cuth, near Babylon, was one of the cities from which Sargon 
(b. c. 722) deported the settlers. See Neubauer, Geogr. du Talm. 329. They 
were also accused of worshipping the amulets buried by Jacob under the 
Enchanted Oak (Gen. xxx. 47). See my Life of Christ , p. 149. 

§Ecclus. 1, 25, 26. 

|| In Deut. xi. 29, they interpolated the words “ that is, Shechem ” after 


THE LIFE OF LIVES. 


138 

ham with Melchisedech,* and as the scene of Jacob’s vision. 
They referred to Deut. xxvii., and to the fact that at 
Shechem Abrabam had built his first altar to the Lord 
(Gen. xii. 7). Since Gerizim had been chosen as “ the 
Mount of Blessing,” f they regarded it — and not Jerusa- 
lem — as being “the place which the Lord thy God shall 
choose.”:}: Their religion was the earliest form of Judaism, 
though they accepted only the Pentateuch as their sacred 
book. They were monotheists ; they adopted circum- 
cision ; they kept the Sabbath and the chief festivals. 

The antagonism between them and the Jews was spe- 
cially accentuated by the building of their Temple on Geri- 
zim in the days of Alexander the Great. § It was destroyed 
by John Hyrcanus in B. C. iio,|| but the mountain was still 
their sacred shrine. The breach might have been healed if 
the Jews in the days Zerubbabel had accepted their offer of 
co-operation in rebuilding the Temple of Jerusalem.^ The 
refusal of this offer led to centuries of embitterment. The 
Jews did not in general rank them above Edomites and 
Philistines,** though in a few respects they gave them a 
grudging recognition. It was not till the days of the Tal- 
mud that they were slanderously charged with worshipping 
a dove. ff The treatment they received at the hands of their 

“ Gerizim, ” and were accused of tampering with the Books of the Law ( Sot eh , 
f. 33, 2). In Chullin , p. 13 i. we read, “ The bread of a Min (heretic) is as 
the bread of a Cuthite ; his wine as the wine of idol-worship ; his books as the 
books of wizards.” Sheviith> ch. 8. “ He who eats the bread of a Cuthite, 

eats as it were the flesh of swine.” Many other passages of the Talmud might 
be quoted. 

* Gen. xiv. 17. f Deut. xi. 29, xxvii. 4, 12. 

% John iv. 20. 

§ It had been originally built by a son-in-law of Sanballat the Heronite. 
Neh. xiii. 28. 

|| Jos. Antt. xii. 9, 1 ; B. J. i. 2, 6. ^[Ezra iv. 

** “ The nation that I hate is no nation,” Ecclus. 1, 25, 26. The Samaritans 
always showed themselves open to foreign influences, and had become greatly 
Hellenised. 

\\ Demoth Jonah , Chullin , f. 6, 1. The dove was worshipped at Ascalon, 


CONDITION OF THE WORLD. 


39 


neighbours caused a bitter hostility, which still raged in 
our Lord’s day. In former times they had purposely caused 
confusion by kindling fire signals to mislead Jews as to the 
time of the Easter moon. They frequently annoyed any 
Jewish Passover pilgrims who ventured to pass through 
their territory.* The people of En-Gannim (Ginaea),f on 
the Samaritan frontier, actually refused hospitality to our 
Lord and the Apostles on their way to His last Passover, 
“because His face was as though He would go to Jerusa- 
lem.”^: Even when Jesus, in His thirst and weariness, 
asked the Samaritan woman for some water from Jacob’s 
well, she was astonished at so small a request, because 
“ Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.”§ It was prob- 
ably for this reason that, on sending out the Apostles on a 
mission, Jesus said, “Into any city of the Samaritans enter 
ye not.” 

The hatred between the two peoples was raised to white 
heat, partly by the promise of an impostor (in A. D. 35) to 
lead the Samaritans to Gerizim, and there reveal to them 
the buried treasures of the old Temple ; || and partly by a 
detestable act of some Samaritans at the Passover. During 
the Feast the Temple was kept open at night, and Samari- 
tans had entered the sacred precincts and prevented the 
possibility of keeping the Passover by scattering dead men’s 
bones about the courts.^ The Samaritans have now 
dwindled down to a small community of some sixty souls, 

and doves may have been an object of worship among the Assyrians. Most of 
the relevant passages of the Talmud, some of which breathe an intense hatred, 
are quoted by Mr. Hershon, Treasures of the Talmud , pp. 188 ff. See, 
too, Schurer, Div. ii., vol. i. pp. 5-8 ; Hamburger, Real Encycl. ii. 1662, etc. 
Jos. Antt. xviii. 2, 2, xx. 6, 1 ; B. J. ii. 12, 3. 

* Lives were sometimes sacrificed. Jos. Antt. xx. 6, 1 ; B.J. ii. 12, 13. 

f Jos. B.J. ii. 12. 

\ Luke ix. 51, 53. 

§ John iv. 9. The clause is omitted in some of the best MSS. 

|| Moses was supposed to have buried the old sacred vessels of the Tabernacle 
an the clefts of Gerizim (Jos. Antt. xviii. 4). 

Jos. Antt. xviii. 2, 2. Coponius, the Procurator, left the crime unpunished. 


140 


THE LIFE OF LIVES. 


and it is probable that they may soon disappear altogether. 
They alone have been able yearly to kill the Paschal lamb, 
because they regard the summit of Gerizim as the chosen 
place for that sacrifice, whereas the Jews, since the destruc- 
tion of Jerusalem, have only been able to observe a 
“ memorial ” (juv^/xovevriHov) and not a “ sacrificial ” 
(Svgi/aov) Passover. 

But the same hatred and alienation still exists. A 
modern traveller relates how he saw a Jew and a Samaritan 
tugging at each other’s beards, and thought that “ there 
were very rough dealings between the Jews and Samari- 
tans.” They are still reviled as “ worshippers of the 
pigeon and the Jewish traveller, Dr. Frankl, tells us that, 
on informing a lady in Samaria that he had been spending 
a morning with the Samaritans, she drew back from him 
with the exclamation, “ Take a purifying bath ! " 

Our Lord utterly discountenanced this spirit of furious 
bigotry and mutual injuries. Although among the Jews 
it was the bitterest term of reproach to call a man “ a 
Samaritan” — as when they said to Jesus, ‘‘Thou art a 
Samaritan, and hast a demon”* — He chose the compas- 
sion of the hated and heretical Samaritan as an example to 
Priests and Pharisees, and gladly accepted the hospitality 
of these detested aliens. This was the more remarkable 
because the Galileans, no less than the Jews, were on terms 
of bitterest animosity with them, and Tacitus tells us of 
“ pillaging upon both sides, marauding bands despatched 
against each other, ambuscades devised, and at times regu- 
lar engagements.” f But Jesus habitually breathed that 
empyreal air of love towards all men, in which it was impos- 
sible that personal or national animosities should continue 
to exist. 

* John viii. 48. 

f Ann. xii. 54. See Hausrath, N. T. Times , E. T. i. 27. 


CONDITION OF THE WORLD. 


141 


V. THE GALILEANS. 

We must next consider what was the condition of the 
Galileans among whom our Lord spent the greater part of 
His life, and to whom the main part of His teaching was 
addressed. 

Galilee (derived from Galil> “ circle,” or “ ring ”) was a 
district of some 1600 square miles, measuring about 36 
miles from east to west, and about 50 miles from north to 
south. With its hills and valleys, rivers, lakes and plains, 
it had every variety of scenery. It was well watered by 
many streams, which took their origin from the accumu- 
lated snows of Lebanon, and even in ancient days it had 
been famous for its fertility, comprising as it did the tribes 
of Asher, Zabulon and Naphthali.* It was a densely popu- 
lated country, which contained, according to Josephus, 204 
towns, 15 fortified places, and 3,000,000 inhabitants. It was 
chiefly remarkable for the mixture of populations which had 
gained it the name of “ Galilee of the Gentiles.” 

Few Jews had settled in the district after the return 
from Babylon, and in B. C. 164 Simon the Maccabean had 
removed them to Judaea/)* Many of the population had, 
however, returned between B. C. 165-135, in the reign of 
John Hyrcanus. Galilee was crowded with Phoenicians, 
Syrians, Arabs, and Greeks. Scythopolis, on the road from 
Jezreel to the Valley of the Jordan, was practically a Gen- 
tile city. The great roads which ran through Galilee were 
constantly traversed by throngs of foreign traders. Sep- 
phoris, so near Nazareth, looked like a Roman city, and at 
Tiberias Herod Antipas had not scrupled to adorn the 
frieze of his palace with the figures of animals. The Gali- 
leans were much more cosmopolitan in their tolerance, and 
far less scrupulously bigoted, than the Jews. But the 

* Deut. xxxiii. 23, 24 ; Gen. xlix. 20 : Hos. xiv. 5 ; Ps. lxxxix. 12. See G. 
A. Smith, Geogr. of the Holy Land , 413 ff. 

f 1 Macc. v. 23 ; 2 Macc. vi. 8 ; Schiirer, Div. i. I, 19. 


142 


THE LIFE OF LIVES. 


Syrians had infected them with superstition so that they 
were specially susceptible to “demoniacal possession.’' 
They were gay and quick-witted, and though they did not 
resist Hellenic and other influences they remained faithful 
Jews and ardent patriots, whose old traditional bravery and 
passionate idealism often hurried them into tumults.* * * § 
Even at Jerusalem their excitability had led to a massa- 
cre, in which Pilate had mingled their blood with their 
sacrifices. 

Judas the Galilean, who came from Gamala, had headed 
the Zealots (a. d. 6 ), who were the extremest section of the 
Pharisees. He took for his watchword, “ No Lord but 
Jehovah ; no tax but the Temple didrachma ; no friend but 
the Zealot.” Judas, indeed, as Gamaliel tells us (Acts v. 
37), perished ; but not till after a furious struggle, which 
warned the Romans not to attempt the taxation of the 
country. 

H is mantle fell on his sons, James, Simon, Menahem, 
and Eleazar, who still maintained internecine hostility 
against Rome. The family of Judas ended with the fearful 
deed of his grandson Eleazar at Magada, when he and all 
his garrison died by their own hands, set the fortress in 
flames, and left nothing for the Roman Conqueror but 
blackened ruins and half-burnt corpses. Hence, as Josephus 
says, a Galilean revolt of two months “ disturbed Rome for 
seventy years, turned Palestine into a desert, destoyed 
the Temple, and scattered Israel over the face of the 
earth.” f 

The Jews ridiculed the rough patois of the Galileans, 
which made them mispronounce the most common letters.g 

The Pharisees, with a strange ignorance of history, said 

*Judg. v. 18. 

f Hausrath ii. 81 ; Jos. B. J. vii. 8, 1, viii. 6. For John of Gamala, see Jos. 
Vit. £fnd B. J. xxi. 1. 

% Mark xiv. 70 ; Matt. xxvi. 73. 

§ Thus they substituted fl for and call a man ith, not tsh. 


CONDITION OF THE WORLD. 


H3 


that “out of Galilee ariseth no prophet.” * Even Nathan- 
ael had asked Philip, “ Can any good thing come out of 
Nazareth? ” and at Pentecost the amazement of the assem- 
bled multitude at the Gift of Tongues was increased by the 
question, “ Behold, are not all these who speak Galileans?” 
“ Nazarene ” was a term of opprobrium even in the first 
century, and it continues to be the contemptuous designa- 
tion for Christians in Palestine to this day. f Nevertheless, 
though they were not without serious faults, and were highly 
excitable and liable to sudden changes of temperament, 
and though Josephus describes them as ever fond of inno- 
vation, we may say in accordance with both ancient and 
modern testimony, that “ they were still a healthy people 
whose conscience would not get corrupted by Rabbinical 
sophistries, and among whom full-grown men were elevated 
far above their Jewish kinsfolk sickening with fanaticism.” :{: 
The Talmud itself bears witness that whereas the Jews 
cared more for money, the Galileans cared more for 
honour. § 

*See ante , p. 108 (footnote). Not a few prophets like Hoshea, and great 
leaders like Barak, sprang from tribes included in the district of Galilee, and 
the glowing poetry of the Song of Songs derives its colouring from the land 
they occupied. See Hausrath i. 14. 

f When I was in Palestine, if ever we came to a village where the inhabitants 
were specially rude and inhospitable, my dragoman used always to say, “ Oh, 
yes, those people are Nazarenes.” 

\ Hausrath quotes Jos. B. J. iii. 2, 3 ; Tac. Hist. v. 6 ; Ann. xii. 5. See 
too Jos. Antt. x. 5, xx. 6, 1 ; B. J. xv. 5 ; Vit. xvii. 

§ See Neubauer, Geogr. der Talmud , p. 181. 


CHAPTER XIII. 


THE STATE OF RELIGION IN PALESTINE. 

“ Corruptio optimi, pessima.” 

The conditions of the world in general woke, then, 
echoes even in Nazareth, and must have had their influence 
on the human mind of Jesus during the silent years. Still 
more would He feel and meditate over the state of things 
in His own province, and in those which bordered upon it. 
As regards questions of eternal moment, the thoughts of 
the people of Palestine, of the countless Jews of the Dis- 
persion, and indirectly of all who were under the sway of 
Imperial Rome, were affected by the religious views of the 
Priests and religious teachers in Judaea, and most of all in 
Jerusalem itself. And there the aspects of religious life 
and religious opinion, which we must now more closely 
scrutinise, might well awaken the deepest misgivings. 

(i.) Of the ZEALOTS we need say but little further. 
They represented the extreme wing of Pharisaic fanaticism, 
and seem first to have acquired their distinctive name in 
the rising of Judas the Galilean in A. D. 6. In Jerusalem 
and Judaea the Zealots were rarely able to achieve any- 
thing. The destruction of the Golden Eagle which Herod 
had put over the Temple Gate, by the wild scholars of the 
Rabbis Judas and Matthias, was punished by wholesale exe- 
cutions. The party became more prominent in later days. 
Many of them degenerated into mere assassins ( sicarii ) 
and conspirators, like the forty who bound themselves 
under a curse ( Cherem ) that they would neither eat nor 
drink till they had murdered Paul. 


144 


RELIGION IN PALESTINE. 


i45 

(ii.) Nor is it necessary to dwell long on the Essenes, for 
the accounts which we have of them vary so much that 
they must either be inaccurate or refer to different sections 
of the general body. The very derivation of the name is 
quite uncertain. Philo seems to connect it with “ holy 
ones.” Others derive it from Jesse. Bishop Lightfoot 
connects it with chasha , “ to be silent ” ; Ewald, from 
chazariy “to be strong”; Gfrorer, from asi, “healers”; 
Gratz, from sacha , “ to bathe.” If Philo's account of them 
in his book, Quod omnis probus liber , be correct, they 
lived mainly in villages, avoided trade, disapproved of war, 
formed social communities of which all the members ate at 
a common table, and lived a life of celibacy and labour. * 
The notion that they worshipped the sun seems to have 
been a calumny or a blunder. Josephus also speaks of 
them. He compares them with the Pythagoreans, f and 
adds such particulars as that they avoided the use of oil, 
refused to take oaths, and were very scrupulous in all mat- 
ters of ceremonial cleanness. He mentions Judas the 
Essene and Menahem as exercising gifts of prophecy, and 
Simon the Essene as an interpreter of dreams. Pliny the 

* The fullest information is given by Bishop Lightfoot in his Essay on the 
Essenes ( Epistle to the Colossians, pp. 1 14-179). The original accounts are 
found in Philo, Quod omnis probus liber; and a quotation from Philo in Euseb. 
Praep . Evang.; Pliny, Hist. Nat. v. 17; Jos. Antt. xiii. 8, 9; ii. 2, xviii. 1. 5, 
etc.; B. J. ii. 8, 2, if. ; Hippol. Laer. ix. 18-28. They were akin in doctrines 
to the Therapeutae, of Alexandria, whom Philo describes in his De Vita Con- 
templativa. Some of the statements about them are confused and contra- 
dictory. 

See, too, the quotation of' Eusebius {Praep. Evan.) from Philo’s De Nobil- 
tate. It must be regarded as quite uncertain whether, in his book (if it be his) 
De Vita Contemplativa , he meant to describe the Essenes under the name of 
Therapeutie. 

f Jos. Antt . ii. 8, 2, xiii. 5, 9, xv. 10, xviii. 1. Both Philo and Josephus 
state the numbers of the Essenes at about 4000. Zeller, Keim, and Herzfeld 
think that they were under Pythagorean influences (as well as Alexandrian) ; 
but there seems more truth in the view of Frankl, Jost, Gratz, Derenbourg, 
Ewald, Hausrath, and others, that Essenism is only a peculiar and extreme 
-development of Pharisaism. 


THE LIFE OF LIVES. 


146 

Elder describes one of their communities which was settled 
in the neighbourhood of Engadi and Masada.* 

They are not even mentioned in the New Testament, or 
in the Mishnah, and they do not seem to have exercised 
any effective influence on the religion of the nation. They 
were exclusive and self-righteous ascetics, who abandoned 
the world, which only regarded them with cold and distant 
curiosity. Their Manichaean tenet that “ enjoyment is 
vile,” is utterly unlike the teaching of Christ, who never 
encouraged self-macerating abstemiousness for its own sake, 
but “ came eating and drinking." “ Essenism was in reality 
only a confession of helplessness against the actual state of 
things, a renunciation of all attempts to reconstruct a 
united Israel." 

The fancy that John the Baptist was an Essene is suffi- 
ciently refuted by the fact that he wore a dress of camel’s 
hair, whereas they dressed in white linen ; and that he fed 
on locusts, whereas they seem to have abjured animal 
food.f We are not told that our Lord or His Apostles- 
once came into contact with them, and nothing is more 
absolutely baseless than the notion that He was Himself an 
Essene. They were Separatists ; His life was spent among 
the multitudes. They were ascetics ; He came eating and 
drinking, and living in outward particulars the common life 
of men. They were Sabbatarians of the strictest school, 
whereas He set aside the rules of Pharisaic Sabbatism. 
They forbade the use and even the manufacture of weapons ; 
He said, “ He that hath no sword, let him sell his cloak 

and buy one.” ^ They were vegetarians; He was not. 

4 

*Plin. H. N. v. 17. There are also dubious and unimportant references to 
them in Epiphanius and in the Talmud. “ The Colossian heresy,” against 
which St. Paul wrote, may have been tinged with Essenian as well as Gnostic 
elements. 

f This is denied by SchUrer (Div. II. vol. ii. 201), but his arguments do not 
seem to me entirely conclusive. Perhaps some only of the Essenes were 
vegetarians. 

X Luke xxii. 36. 


RELIGION IN PALESTINE. 


H7 


They would never touch food not prepared by the members 
of their sect ; He reclined alike at the banquets of the Publi- 
can and of the Pharisee, and swept away hosts of petty Hal- 
achoth about ceremonial uncleanness. They shunned and 
despised women ; He was followed by a band of ministering 
women. They washed themselves if a stranger touched 
them ; He suffered the penitent harlot to wet His feet with 
her tears, and to wipe them with the hairs of her head. So 
far as they aimed at holiness, and believed in a universal 
Priesthood, they resembled the Christians, but their reli- 
gious opinions and practices diverged most widely from the 
teachings of Christ, and would have been absolutely power- 
less for the regeneration of the world.* 

(iii.) The SADDUCEES played a far greater part in the 
politics and destiny of Palestine that the Essenes, and exer- 
cised a wider influence over the fortunes of the people. In 
Jerusalem the Sadducees and Pharisees absorbed or over- 
shadowed all other sects. 

The entire religion of Israel underwent a change during 
the Babylonian Captivity, quite apart from any Persian 
influences which the Jews imbibed. 

Before the Captivity the people had shown an incessant 
tendency to relapse into idolatry. After the Captivity 
they abhorred idols with the whole intensity of their con- 
victions. 

But the peril of idolatry was replaced by the peril of a 
dead ritual, and by the ruinous results of substituting an 
outward and mechanical worship for the service of pure 
hearts and holy lives. 

From the days of Ezra, all the ordinances which may be 

* See, among other authorities, Gfrorer, Philo ii. 299; Uhlhorn, s.v. 
“ Essenes ’’(Herzog’s Real Encyc.) ; Hilgenfeld, fud. Apocal . 243-286 ; Ilerz- 
feld, Gesch. des Volkes Isr. iii. 368 ff.; Keim, i. 365 ~ 393 ; Ewald, Gesch. des 
Volkes Isr. iv. 453 ; Wescott, “ Essenes” (Smith’s Diet, of the Bible) ; Gins- 
burg, “Essenes” (Kitto’s Cyclop.) ; Thomson, Book s which Influenced Our 
Lord , 75-123 ; Lightfoot, Colossians (349-419) ; and the authorities referred to 
by Hausrath, Schurer, and Hamburger, s.v. “ Essaer.” 


348 


THE LIFE OF LIVES. 


summed up under the head of “ Levitism ” — all the Levitic 
ordinances of the later Mosaic Law — assumed a new and 
immense prominence.* During the long centuries from 
the entrance of Israel into Canaan to the Return from the 
Exile, there is scarcely the slightest trace that they existed, 
and certainly they do not attract the least attention. The 
Day of Atonement, which came to be regarded as the most 
memorable day of the year, is not mentioned even in nar- 
ratives where everything would have led us to suppose that 
it would have occupied a most prominent place. The name 
•of Azazel, the evil spirit to whom the scape-goat was 
devoted, only occurs in Lev. xvi., and is alluded to nowhere 
else in the whole Bible. But after the days of Ezra, “ ordi- 
nances which were not good, and statutes whereby they 
could not live ” f — given to the Jews originally only 
“ because of the hardness of their hearts ” ; this system of 
ordinances — against the slavish use of which the great 
Prophets of Israel had spoken in tones of thunder — became 
the main religion, and ultimately the almost mechanical 
fetish of the religionists of the nation. The patriotism, and 
the fervour for the institutions of Moses, aroused by the 
cruel persecutions and apostatising Hellenism of some 
of the Priests, created the party of the Chasidim, or “ the 
Pious.” The party which rejected legal stringency gradually 
acquired the name of Sadducees. The origin of the name 
is uncertain. The Fathers — as Epiphanius and St. Jerome 
— connected it with Tsaddikim , “ the righteous,” but the 
form of the name perhaps indicates a connection with Tsad- 
duk, or Zadok.% The sons of Zadok formed one of the 
priestly families, and the name may have been immediately 

*It is remarkable that the word “ Levites” occurs only twice in the N. T. : 
John i. 19 ; Luke x. 32. 

f Ezek. xx. 25. 

\ Epiphan. Panar. H. 14 ; Jer. in Matt. xxii. 23. The double d favours 
this derivation. The word may have been altered from Tsaddikim to Tsad- 
doukxm only because of assonance with Peroushim , “Pharisees.” On the 
Sadducees, see Taylor, Pirqe Avdth , pp. 126, 127. 


RELIGION IN PALESTINE. 


149 


derived from Zadok, the High Priest in the days of David 
(Ezek. xl.46; I Chr. xii. 28 ; Ex. ii. 2) ; or from Zadok, the 
pupil of Antigonus of Socho,* and successor of Simeon the 
Just. Antigonus is said to have left behind him the rule 
that “ we ought not to do righteousness for the sake of 
reward.” As the notion that salvation must be earned by 
legal scrupulosities was rooted in the system of the Phari- 
sees, the opposition to this view became the mark of Sad- 
ducees. The Chasidhn developed into the Perushim (Sep- 
aratists), or Pharisees ; and the Sadducees, as representing 
the Priests, rejected more and more the authority of the 
Pharisaic Rabbis. They would only accept the Written 
Law, and ignored “ the traditions of the Elders ” with 
which it was overlaid. 

But besides the endless disputes which arose between the 
two parties about the interpretation of Levitic rules, there 
were other lines of demarcation. The Sadducees were the 
more aristocratic party, and also the more worldly and cos- 
mopolitan. Almost all the leading Priests were Sadducees, f 
and this sacerdotal party, contenting itself with sacrificial 
functions, was always inclined to temporise. Even in the 
days of Ezra and Nehemiah the Priests had shown a ten- 
dency to be at ease amid their privileges and emoluments, 
to adopt motives of worldly policy, and to relax the most 
binding ordinances.^: Thus Eliashib the Priest, in direct 
defiance of the Mosaic Law (Deut. xxiii. 3, 4), had roused 
the righteous indignation of Nehemiah by clearing out a 
chamber in the Temple which had been used for storing 
tithes and frankincense, and assigning it to the use of 
Tobiah the Ammonite. In later days the Priests Manasseh 
and Onias had proved themselves traitors to the nation and 
its religion in their dealings with the Seleucidse, and Joshua 
had openly assumed the heathen name of Jason. 

The Asmonaean Priest-Prince Alexander Jannaeus, dis- 

* Aboth de Rabbi Nathan, 5. 


f Acts v. 17. 


\ Neh. xiii. 7. 


THE LIFE OF LIVES. 


150 

gusted with the arrogance, insolence, and dishonesty of the 
Pharisaic leader, Simeon ben Shetach, had joined the Sad- 
ducees. He showed his contempt for Pharisaic tradition at 
the Feast of Tabernacles, by pouring out the libation on 
the ground, and not on the altar.* The people were 
always with the Pharisees, and in their fury at this neglect 
of customary ritual, they pelted Jannaeus with the citrons 
and branches (< lulabim ) which they carried in their hands. 
This resulted in a tumult and a massacre, but the Priest- 
Prince became so conscious of the power of the Pharisees 
that on his deathbed he ordered his widow to reconcile 
herself with them.f 

In the days of Herod the Great, Sudduceeism assumed its 
fullest dimensions, for then the priests could reckon on the 
aid of Roman and Idumaean despotism. Herod had sum- 
moned to the High Priesthood the obscure Ananeel, of 
Babylon. After this the High Priesthood, as we shall see 
hereafter, became the coveted appanage of a few worldly 
families — the House of Annas, the Boethusim, :f the Kam- 
hits, and others. These Priests, while they professed the 
utmost strictness about sacrificial minutiae, had the worst 
reputation among the people for greed, tyranny, and 
arrogance, and denied such essential elements of religion 
as the immortality of the soul, the resurrection of the body,, 
the future Messianic kingdom, § the world of angels and 
spirits, and even (it is said) the over-ruling Providence of 
God in the affairs of men.|| The Sadducees remained to 
the last the aristocratic and exclusive party, luxurious 
time-servers, insouciant sceptics, noted at once for cruelty 
and Epicureanism. Disliked by the nation, and strong 

* Succah, f. 48, 2. 

f Jos. Antt, xiii. 15, 5 ; Soteh, f. 22, 2 ; Derenbourg, Palestine , p. 99. 

% The Boethusim owed their elevation to Herod, who married Mariamne: 
(the Second), a daughter of the Alexandrian Priest Joazar, son of Boethos. 

§ Jos. Antt. xviii. 1, 4 ; Enoch xcviii. 6, c. 16, civ. 7. 

1 See Jos. Anti. x. 11, 7, xviii. 1, 3, xiii. 5, 9 ; B.J. ii. 8, 14 ; Acts xxiiu 
8 ; Keim, i. 353-365. The Talmud calls them “Epicureans.” 


RELIGION IN PALESTINE. 


15 1 

only by their alliance with the ruling powers, they had to 
allow the Pharisees to dominate in the Sanhedrin.* “The 
eloquence of the Synagogue," says Hausrath, “ had won 
the victory over the splendour of the Temple, but only to 
dig a pit for the State, in which the Temple and School 
were together buried.” Whatever the Sadducees may 
have been in their origin, they had, before the days of our 
Lord, degenerated into “ typical opportunists," bent above 
all things on holding fast their own rights, privileges, and 
immunities.f 

(iv.) The Herodians need not occupy much of our 
attention. They are only mentioned on two occasions in 
the Gospels (Mark. iii. 6, xii. 13; Matt. xxii. 16). Josephus 
defines them generally as “ the partisans of Herod ” 
( 01 ra rov 'Hpaodov (ppovovvrt ?), and it is evident that 
they were a political rather than a religious party. It is 
true that Tertullian says that they tried to represent Herod 
the Great as a sort of political Messiah,^ and they certainly 
claimed the adherence of so prominent an Essene as 
Menahem (Manaen), whose son was a foster-brother of 
Herod. § But though they recognised in Jesus an enemy 
to their worldly views, and were ready to plot with 
Pharisees and Sadducees, and attempted to entangle Him 
by their insidious questions as to the lawfulness of paying 
tribute-money to Caesar, they played no prominent part 
among the religious sects of Palestine. 

(v.) We shall recur to the subject of the distinctive views 
of the PHARISEES when we have to show our Lord’s deal- 
ings with them and their system. 

The Perushim rose into prominence in those times of 

#1 Macc. ii. 42, vii. 13, 17 ; 2 Macc. xiv. 6. See Wellhausen, Pharisaer 
unci Sadducaer , 76 ff. 

f “Qui Christum Herodem esse dixerunt.” Tert. Adv. Omn. Haer. 1. 
Jer. Adv. Lucifer (opp. Bened. iv. 304), “ Herodiani Herodem regem 

suscepere pro Christo.” 

% See Jos. Antt. xv. 10, 5 ; Lightfoot, Hor. Hebr. ii. 726. 

§ Acts xiii. i. 


' 5 2 


THE LIFE OF LIVES. 


priestly Hellenising which were known as the “ days of the 
mingling” ; and the word Perishooth , or “separatism,” rep- 
resents the apLiZia of legalised and intentional unsocia- 
bility (2 Macc. xiv. 3, 38). In the days of Christ they had 
risen into marked prominence, and are said to have num- 
bered 6000 adherents of their sect.* Their main charac- 
teristic was devotion to the Oral Law, with its masses of 
inferential tradition, and a slavish reverence for the 
Lawyers, Scribes, and Rabbis, to whose misplaced and 
microscopic ingenuity the development of this system was 
due. The Talmud is, of course, a late and most untrust- 
worthy authority. It is utterly unhistoric, and full of 
confusions, anachronisms, and sheer inventions; yet to a 
certain extent it represents the continuity of older tradi- 
tions. The Talmudists leave a false impression when they 
represent the Zougoth, or “ Couples ”f — that is, the two 
leading teachers of the Schools in successive generations — 
as having been the Presidents (the Nasi and the Ab-beth- 
Din) of the Sanhedrin — for the Nasi was always the High 
Priest. The leading Rabbis merely held positions in the 
non-political Sanhedrin of the Schools. Those of them who 
were specially and, so to speak, professionally, devoted to 
the study of the Law, were called “ Lawyers,” i. <?., 
“ Teachers of the Law,” or “ Scribes, of whom the Son 
of Sirach says, “Where subtle parables are, he will be 
there also. He will seek out the hidden meaning of 
similitudes, and be conversant in the dark sayings of 
parables.” § 

There were many particulars in which Pharisaism was 

* Jos. Antt. xvii. ii. 4. 

f The chief “Couples” were: Jose Ben Joezer and Jose Ben Jochanan, 
Joshua Ben Perachiah and Nitai of Arbela, Jehuda Ben Tabbai and Simeon 
Ben Shetach, Shemaiah and Abtalion, Hillel and Shammai. 

X^ofUKoi, vopodidaoKahn, Luke vii. 30, xi. 45, etc. The “Scribes of the 
Pharisees ” is the true reading in Mark ii. 16. The Sopherim (ypaufiarel() > 
“ Scribes,” are hardly distinguishable from “ the Lawyers.” 

§ Ecclus. xxxix. 1-5. 


RELIGION IN PALESTINE. 


*5 3 


nearer to Christianity than Sadduceeism. The Pharisees 
believed in the coming of the Messianic Kingdom, though 
they mistook its nature. They believed in the immortality 
of the soul, and the overruling Providence of God. But the 
more they sank into petty ceremonialism — the more extrava- 
gantly they valued mere external acts — the more radically 
did they degrade the conception of the true nature of God. 
Their religionism led to a hypocrisy all the deeper because 
it was half unconscious. What shall we think of the 
Talmudic representation of God, the Lord of Heaven and 
Earth, as a kind of magnified Rabbi, who repeats the 
Sh’ma to Himself daily; wears phylacteries on the wrist 
and forehead; occupies Himself three hours every day in 
studying His own law ; has disputes with the Angels about 
legal minutiae ; and finally summons a Rabbi to settle the 
difference? Religion must always suffer in the worst 
degree when the King of Kings and Lord of Lords, who 
filleth Infinitude and Eternity, is dwarfed into a small- 
minded precisionist, to be pleased and pacified by pros- 
trations, genuflexions, ablutions, and infinitestimal minu- 
tiae, as though these paltry externals could be substitutes 
for that inward holiness which alone He requires. 

It is not too much to say that Pharisaism sank more and 
more into a system which, while it travestied the burden- 
some externalities of developed Levitism, ignored all that 
was noblest and most spiritual in the whole teaching of 
the Old Testament Scriptures. It nullified and superseded 
the plainest injunctions of Moses by casuistic Halachoth 
and tricky Erubhin ; and took into no real account the 
magnificent and unbroken series of utterances which, in 
book after book of Scripture, laid it down with unmistak- 
able plainness that such things are to true religion but 
as the small* dust of the balance. With deplorable self- 
deceit the Pharisees aborbed themselves in numbering 
the threads of tassels, and tithing the stalks of pot- 
herbs, while for such cheap things they neglected the 


154 


THE LIFE OF LIVES. 


weightier matters of the Law — Justice, Mercy, and Truth. 
That was why they drew down upon themselves “ the seven- 
fold flash of Christ’s terrible invective.” Utterly absorbed 
in making their “ hedge round the Law,” they emptied the 
Law itself — especially its most pure and spiritual elements — 
of all the deepest significance.* Paralysed by self-induced 
hypocrisy they showed far less real sincerity than the 
blindest of Pagan devotees, and while they posed as religious 
teachers, they poisoned religion at its fountain-head, made 
it petty and unreal, and precipitated the catastrophe which 
overwhelmed themselves and the nation which they had 
misled. 

The Prophets of the Old Testament furnished a direct 
antithesis to the current Pharisaism of the Gospel era; 
their declarations of the inmost will of God are valid for all 
time, and constitute the final distinctions between conceited 
will-worship and that religion which is pure and undefiled 
before God and the Father. 

What said the mighty MOSES? 

“ And now, Israel, what doth the Lord thy God require 
of thee, but to fear the Lord thy God, to walk in all His 
ways, and to love Him ? ” f 

What said the holy SAMUEL ? 

“ Hath the Lord as great delight in burnt-offerings and 
sacrifices as in obeying the voice of the Lord ? Behold, to 
obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of 
rams.” ^ 

What said KING SOLOMON ? 

“To do justice and judgment is more acceptable to the 
Lord than sacrifice.” § 

What said the inspired gatherer of sycamore leaves — the 
Prophet Amos ? 

“ I hate, I despise your feast-days, and I will not dwell in 


* On the Pharisees, see Jos. Antt. xvii. 2, 4 ; B. J. ii. 8, 14. 
\ Deut. x. 12, 13. \ 1 Sam. xv. 22. 


§ Prov. xxi. 3. 


RELIGION IN PALESTINE. 


i55 

your solemn assemblies. . . . But let judgment run down 
as waters, and righteousness as a mighty stream.” * 

What said the sad-hearted Hoshea, in words which were 
the favourite quotation of our Lord ? 

“ I desired mercy and not sacrifice ; and the knowledge 
of God more than burnt-offerings.” f 

What said the burning ISAIAH, again and again, in words 
which were like thunder ? 

“ To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices unto 
Me, saith the Lord. . . Bring no more vain oblations ; 
Incense is an abomination unto Me. Wash you, make you 
clean, put away the evil of your doings from before Mine 
eyes ; cease to do evil ; learn to do well.” % 

What said the royal David in his broken-hearted peni- 
tence ? 

“ Thou desirest not sacrifice, else would I give it ; Thou 
delightest not in burnt-offerings. The sacrifices of God are 
a broken spirit ; a broken and a contrite heart, O God, Thou 
wilt not despise.” § 

What said the sweet Psalmists of Israel ? 

“ Lord, who shall abide in Thy tabernacle ? Who shall 
dwell in Thy holy hill? He that walketh uprightly and 
worketh righteousness, and speaketh the truth in his 
heart.” || 

“ Who shall ascend unto the hill of the Lord ? And who * 
shall stand in His holy place? He that hath clean hands 
and a pure heart ; who hath not lifted up his soul to vanity 
nor sworn to deceive his neighbour. He shall receive the 
blessing from the Lord, and righteousness from the God of 
his salvation.” 1* 

What said JEREMIAH, in language startling in its em- 
phasis ? 

* Amos v. 21-24. t Hos. vi. 6 ; Matt. xii. 7. 

\ Is. i. 11, 16, 17. Comp, lviii. 6, 7, lxvi. 3, xxix. 13, and passim. 

§ Ps. li. 16, 17. Comp, xxxiv. 18. 

| Ps. xv. 1, 2. IfPs. xxiv. 3-5. Comp. Ps. lxxxiv. 11, 12. 


THE LIFE OF LIVES. 


j 56 

“ I spake not unto your fathers, nor commanded them in? 
the day that I brought them out of the land of Egypt, con- 
cerning burnt-offerings or sacrifices ; but this thing com- 
manded I them, saying, Obey My voice, and I will be your 
God.” * 

What said EZEKIEL ? 

“ They sit before thee as My people, and they hear thy 
words, but they will not do them. For with their mouth 
they shew much love, but their heart goeth after their 
covetousness.” f 

What said the eloquent MlCAH ? 

“ Wherewith shall I come before the Lord and bow my- 
self before the Most High God? Shall I come before Him 
with burnt-offerings, with calves of a year old ? Will the 
Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, or with ten thou- 
sands of rivers of oil ? Shall I give my first-born for my 
transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul ? 
He hath showed thee, O man, what is good ; and what doth 
the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love: 
mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God ? ” \ 

What said Habakkuk? 

“ The just shall live by faith,” or “ in his faithfulness.” § 

What said ZECHARIAH in answer to inquiries about 
fasting ? 

“ Execute true judgment, and show mercy and compas- 
sion every man to his brother.” “ These are the things 
that ye shall do. Speak ye every man the truth to his 
neighbour. And let none of you imagine evil in your 
hearts.” fl 

The teaching of the whole New Testament as to the 
nature of true religion, and as to what God desires, is in 
closest accordance with these utterances of the Prophets. 
This must be patent to every one who has not blinded and 

* Jer. vii. 22, 23. f Ezek. xxxiii. 31. \ Micah. vi. 6-8. 

§ Hab. ii. 4. (John iii. 36 ; Gal. ii. 16, iii. 11 ; Heb. x. 38.) 

| Zech. vii. 9, viii. 16, 17. 


RELIGION IN PALESTINE. 


i57 


benumbed his own soul by the super-exaltation of tradi- 
tional nothings. Suffice it to point to the explicit words of 
Christ Himself. When the young man asked Him, “What 
must I do to be saved?” he received the answer, “ If thou 
wouldst enter into the kingdom of heaven, keep the com- 
mandments.” When the Scribe, tempting Him, asked, 
“ Which is the great commandment of the Law ? ” He said 
that on the two commandments, “ Love God with all thy 
heart,” and “ Love thy neighbour as thyself,” hang all the 
Law, and the Prophets.” * 

To quote but two of His special utterances, he said : 

“ Not every one that saith unto Me, Lord, Lord, shall 
enter into the kingdom of heaven, but he that doeth the 
will of My Father which is in heaven.” f 

And He said : 

“ Whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you, 
even so do unto them: for this is the Law and the 
Prophets.”;): 

Contrast these with some of the Pharisaic utterances in 
the Talmud, which constantly confound an easy, useless, 
and self-deceiving legalism with the holiness which God 
requires. 

The Mosaic rule about wearing fringes (Num. xv. 38) 
( Tsitsith , npa(D 7 teda , Matt. ix. 20), at the “wings,” i. e. t 
corners of garments, and to put on them a thread § of blue, 
is probably of Egyptian origin ; and there was nothing 
either burdensome or unreasonable about it, since the white 
wool and blue threads might stand as symbols of innocence 
and heaven. But to this the Scribes had added a moun- 
tainous mass of oral pedantries. The fringe was to be 
made of four threads of white wool, of which one was to 
be wound round the others first 7 times with a double 
knot, then 8 times with a double knot, then 11 times 
with a double knot, then 13 times with a double knot; 

f Matt. vii. 21, xii. 50. 

§ Not as in A. V., “ ribands.” 


* Matt. xxii. 38 ; Mark xii. 33. 
\ Matt. vii. 12. 


158 


THE LIFE OF LIVES. 


because 7 + 8 + 11 = 2 6, the numerical value of the 
letters of Jehovah (HUT), and 13 is the numerical value of 
Achad, “one,” so that the number of windings represents 
the words “ Jehovah is one.” 

The great Rashi said, “ The precept concerning fringes is 
as weighty as all the other precepts put together ; for it is 
written (Num. xv. 39), ‘ And remember all the command- 
ments of the Lord.’ ” Now numerically (by what the Rabbis 
called Gematria) the word fringes ( Tsitsith ) = 600; and 
this with 8 threads and 5 knots makes 613. And Rabbi 
Samlai had said that Moses gave 613 commandments, 
namely, 365 negative ( Gezaroth ), as many as the days of the 
year, and 248 positive ( Tekanoth), as many as the members of 
the human body = 613;* and this he proved by saying 
that Thorah, “Law,” by Gematria = 61 1 ; which with “ I 
am,” and “Thou shalt have no other” = 613.! 

Again, Rashi said that “ he who observes the precepts 
about fringes shall have 2800 slaves to wait on him ” : for, 
in Zech. viii. 23, we are told that ten men of all nations 
shall take hold of the skirt of a Jew, and as there are 
seventy nations, and four corners of a garment, 70 X 10 X 

4 = 28004 

In the same Talmudic treatise we are also told that Rabbi 
Joseph ben Rabba declared that “the law about fringes” 
was the one which should be most strongly inculcated, and 
that his father Rabba having once accidentally trodden on 
his fringe and torn it while he was standing on a ladder, 
stayed where he was, and. would not move till it was 
mended.§ 

Our Lord, when He warned the people and His disciples 

*See the Kabbalistic work Kitzur Sh'lu, p. 2, and Hershon, Talm. Misc., 
pp. 322 ff. 

t Shevuoth, f. 29, 1 ; Maccoth, f. 23, 2. In Deut. xxii. 12 they are called 
gedillim , lxx., OTpeirra, R. V. Marg., “twisted threads.” The rule is elabor- 
ated in Num. xv. 37, 38. 

\ Shabbath, f. 32,. 2. 

§ Shabbath , f. 118, 2. See Rashi on Num. xv. 39. 


RELIGION IN PALESTINE. 


*59 

against the hypocrisy of the Pharisees, said not only that 
“ they enlarge the border of their garments ” (which is an 
allusion to the “ fringes ”), but also that “they make broad 
their phylacteries,” Tephillin. * * * § 

It is at least doubtful whether Moses ever intended these 
Tephillin to be worn. He said indeed, “ It [the institution 
of the Passover] shall be for a sign unto thee upon thine 
hand, and for a memorial between thine eyes” ; f and “ It 
shall be for a token upon thine hand, and for frontlets 
between thine eyes.” $ There is the strongest probability 
that the words were only metaphorical, just as in Prov. iii. 
3, “ Bind them on thy neck ; write them on the tablet of 
thine heart.” For there is no trace of any early use of these 
prayer-boxes, and the passages inscribed on the vellum are 
by no means the most memorable that might have been 
selected. § On these grounds the sensible Karaites rejected 
the use of them, and St. Jerome rightly explains the pas- 
sages to mean that the Jews should meditate constantly on 
these commands. The Scribes and Pharisees, however, 
attached the most exaggerated importance to the use of 
them, and made them as showily broad as they could. 
The arm-phylacteries ( Tephillin shel yod) were bound on 
the left arm, so as to be near the heart ; and the head- 
phylacteries ( Tephillin shel rosh) were bound between the 
eyes. The leather strips by which they were tied were 
regarded as symbols of “ the self-fettering of the Divine 
commands.” On the phylactery of the forehead the four 
passages were to be written on four strips, and each placed 
in a separate compartment of the calfskin receptacle, and 
each was to be tied round with well-washed hair from the 

*The separate compartments of the beth or “ house ” of the Tephillin were 
called Totaphoth. 

f Ex. xiii. 9. 

| Ex. xiii. 16. Similiarly, the use of Mezuzoth, hollow cylinders with texts 
in them, was founded on Deut. vi. 8, xi. 18. 

§ They were Ex. xiii. 1-16 ; Deut. vi. 4-9, xi. 13-21. 


i6o 


THE LIFE OF LIVES. 


tail of a calf, with the letter Shin, with three prongs on 
the right side (for Shaddai , Almighty), and with four 
prongs on the left side. In the “ arm-phylactery ” the 
four passages were to be written on a single slip of parch- 
ment in four columns of seven lines each, and the 
thong was to be passed round the arm three times 
for and then to have seven more twists. Rabbi Simon 
Hassida deduced from Ex. xxxiii. 23 that God had revealed 
to Moses the way to make the knot of the phylacteries,* 
and also that the Eternal Himself wears “ phylacteries.” 
So vast was the importance attached to these fetishes that 
the Rabbis said, “ He who has Tephillin on his arm, and 
Tsitsith on his garment, and Mezuzoth on his door, has 
every possible guarantee that he will not sin.” Yet they 
said that, since some of the words of the Law were “ light ” 
and some “ heavy,” it was venial to deny that phylacteries 
had ever been enjoined ; but since all the words of the 
Scribes were “ heavy,” i. e ., of consummate importance, it 
was a capital offence to say that the division of the prayer- 
box should have five compartments and not four !f Salva- 
tion by works, and by such paltry nothings as these, was 
the direct contradiction of the righteousness which Jesus 
taught. Thus we may say of the Pharisees that their fear 
towards God was taught by the precepts of men.J 

“ Mankind,” said Bishop Butler, “are for placing the 
stress of their religion anywhere rather than upon virtue.” 
Nevertheless in virtue — or to use the higher and better 
words, “in righteousness and true holiness” — all that is 
essential in true religion is comprised. The vast error both 
of Sadducees and Pharisees was that they laid more stress on 
rules which had degenerated into external rites and petty 
puerilities than on temperance, chastity, and soberness. And 

* Beb. Barachoth, f. 7. 

\Menack. 33, 6 ; Jer. Berachoth , 3, 6. See Gfrorer, Jahr. d. Heils i. 146 ; 
Schwab, p. 17 ; Kalisch, Exodus , p. 224. 

X Matt. xv. 9 ; Col. ii. 22. 


RELIGION IN PALESTINE. 


161 

that was why Christ addressed them as “ Ye hypocrites ! ” 
and quoted against them the words of the Evangelical 
Prophet: “This people draweth nigh unto Me with their 
mouth and honoureth Me with their lips ; but their heart is 
far from Me. But in vain they do worship Me, teaching 
for doctrines the commandments of men.”* 


In these pages we have been able to furnish but the 
slightest glimpse of the religious condition of the Jews in the 
time of our Lord, as represented by their leading parties. 
But in the Talmud itself we find the elements of their 
emphatic condemnation. The people, while they continued 
to pay conventional honour to the Priests, deeply suspected 
them of betraying the national interests for their own 
aggrandisement^ and gave their main confidence to the 
Pharisees. On the great Day of Atonement, on one occa- 
sion, the High Priest left the Temple followed by a crowd 
of worshippers, just after he had pronounced the promises 
of God’s pardon ; but on seeing the Pharisaic “ couple ” of 
the day, Shemaiah and Abtalion, the crowd immediately 
deserted the High Priest to give an escort to the Rabbis. 
“ Greeting to the men of the people ! ” said the sarcastic 
and indignant Pontiff. “Greeting,” answered the Rabbis, 
“ to the men of the people who do the works of Aaron, not 
to the sons of Aaron who do not resemble Aaron.” $ 

Thus, of the Sadducean families of Priests in the days of 
the Herods we read : 

“ Woe to the family of Boethos ! woe to their spears ! ” 

“ Woe to the family of Hanan (Annas) ! woe to their 
serpent-hissings ! ” 

“ Woe to the family of Kanthera ! woe to their pens ! ” 


* Matt. XV. 8, 9. t Jos- Antt > »v. 3. 2. 

\ Yotna , f. 71, 2 ; Gratz, iii. 116 ; Derenbourg, p. 118. See Hamburger, 
Real-Encycl. ii. 1043. 


162 


THE LIFE OF LIVES. 


“ Woe to the family of Ishmael ben Phabi ! woe to their 
fists ! " 

“They themselves are High Priests. Their sons are the 
treasurers ; their sons-in-law captains of the Temple ; and 
their servants smite the people with their rods.”* 

In another passage we read that “the threshold of the 
Sanctuary uttered four cries, 1 Depart hence, ye descend- 
ants of Eli ; you defile the Temple of Jehovah ! ’ 

“ ‘ Depart hence, Issachar of Kephar Barkai, who only 
carest for thyself, and profanest the victims consecrated to 
heaven — [for he wore silk gloves when he sacrificed !] 

“ ‘ Open yourselves wide, ye portals ! let Ishmael ben 
Phabi enter, the disciple of Pinekai. 

“‘Open yourselves wide, ye gates! let Johanan ben 
Nebedai enter, the disciple of gluttons, that he may gorge 
himself on the victims ! ’ 

And of the Pharisees, we read : 

There are eight sects of Pharisees, viz., these : 

1. The shoulder Pharisees, i. e. } he who, as it were, shoul- 
ders his good works, to be seen of men. 

2. The time-gaining Pharisee, he who says, “ Wait a 
little while ; let me first perform this or that good work.” 

3. The compounding Pharisee, he who says, “ May my 
few sins be deducted from my many virtues, and so atoned 
for.” 

4. The mortar Pharisee ( medorkia ), who so bends his back 
with his eyes on the ground, as to look like an inverted 
mortar. 

This seems to be the same as the tumbling Pharisee, who 
is so humble that he will not lift his feet from the ground ; 

* Pesachim, f. 57, I ; Kerithoth , f. 28. Josephus furnishes a startling com- 
ment on the last woe in Anti. xx. 8, 9. See also Tosefta, Menachoth ad Jin.; 
Geiger, Urschrift, p. 118; Derenbourg, Palestine , p. 233; Renan, L’ Antichrist,. 
p. 51; Raphall, Hist, of the Jews , ii. 370. 

f Derenbourg, Palestine , p. 233. He regards Pinekai as meaning Self- 
indulgence ,” an ironic variation of Phinehas. 


RELIGION IN PALESTINE. 163 

and the hump-backe'd Pharisee who walked as though his 
shoulders bore the whole weight of the Law. 

5. The tell-me-another-duty-to-do-and-I-will-do-it Pharisee. 

6. The Shechemite Pharisee, who is a Pharisee only for 
reward . (Corn. Gen. xxxiv. 19.) 

7. The timid Pharisee, who is a Pharisee only from dread 
of Punishment. 

To which Rabbi Nathan adds: 

8. The born Pharisee. 

And some substituted for one of these classes the bleed- 
ing Pharisee ( kinai ), who shuts his eyes and knocks his 
face against walls, lest he should happen to see a woman. 

In their unbounded self-exaltation, and undisguised con- 
tempt for all except their own set, they thrust themselves 
into the place of God, and identified their small decisions 
with the very voice of the Almighty. They fostered the 
“ enormous delusion ” that sensuous and finical scrupulos- 
ities constituted an acceptable service, and could suspend 
the vengeance of God, which they imagined as ever ready 
to burst upon those who neglected and despised their 
“ commandments of men." Punctilious trifles were sub- 
stituted for holy lives, and immorality was concealed under 
a cloak “ doubly-lined with the fox-fur of hypocrisy." 

Dr. Emmanuel Deutsch says that the Talmud inveighs 
even more bitterly and caustically than the New Testa- 
ment against what it calls “ the plague of Pharisaism ” — 
“the dyed ones who do evil deeds and claim godly recom- 
pense";* “they who preach beautifully, but do not act 
beautifully." Parodying their exaggerated logical arrange- 
ments, their scrupulous divisions and sub-divisions, the 
Talmud, among its classes of unworthy pretenders, says 
that the real and only Pharisee is he who doeth the will of 

* Jer. Berachoth , f. ix. 7, f. 13 ; Bab. Soiek, f. 22, 1 ; Avdth d' Rabbi 
Nathan, ch. 37. See Hershon, Talm. Miscel. p. 122 ; Derenbourg, Palestine, 
p. 71. In Soteh , f. 21, 2, we read : “ Foolish saints, crafty villains, sancti- 
monious women, and self -afflicting Pharisees are the destroyers of the world.” 


THE LIFE OF LIVES. 


164 

his Father in heaven because he loves Him. But the charge 
of hypocrisy against the Pharisees was not new in the days 
of Christ. Even Alexander Jannaeus had warned his wife 
against “ painted Pharisees, who do the deeds of Zimri and 
look for the reward of Phinehas.” 

Yet there must be in the human mind an instinctive 
tendency to substitute outward observance for heart- 
religion, and to make exaggerated legalism usurp the place 
of true holiness; for Pharisaism, from its incipient stage in 
the days of the Scribes of the Great Synagogue till the time 
when it was codified in the Mishnah, covered a space of six 
centuries ; and, in the grotesque developments of Talmud- 
ism, it lasted on, in greater or less degree, down to modern 
times. The explanation of the tendency is that externalism 
is easy, and generates a self-satisfaction which enables men 
to pose as “ religious,” while they despise others. Nothing 
is more easy than to live with boundless self-complacency 
in an elaborate round of functions dictated by some empty 
Directorium of useless and obsolete tradition : but, as even 
a heathen could say, it is difficult — difficult and not so easy 
as it seems — to be good and not bad. 






CHAPTER XIV. 

THE MESSIANIC HOPE. 

“ Proclaim glad tidings in Jerusalem, for God hath had mercy upon 
Israel in her visitation. Set thyself, O Jerusalem, upon a high place, 
and behold thy sons and thy daughters from the morning unto the 
evening, brought together for ever by the Lord.”— Ps. Salom xi. 

“ All the prophets prophesied of nothing else than of the days of the 
Messiah.” — Bab. Berachoth , f. 34, 2. 

SUCH was the condition of the world and of religion as 
Jesus heard of it, and saw it, and meditated upon it, while 
in holy and obscure poverty He toiled in the shop of the 
village carpenter. But He was also profoundly conscious 
of the deep unrest, of the passionate longing for deliver- 
ance, which moved the inmost hearts of thousands, and 
caused so many of the best and holiest to live in constant 
and yearning hope for “ the redemption of Jerusalem ” and 
4i the consolation of Israel.” * 

There are epochs in the world’s history when men feel a 
depressing sense of uncertainty and misery which tends 
to deepen into despair. At such times they yearn with the 
whole strength of their being for some fresh communication 
of the mind and will of God. The lamp of revelation has 
a tendency to burn dim as the ages advance ; not only be- 
cause it remains untrimmed, but also because the require- 
ments of the ages differ, and that which sufficed the needs 
of one millennium loses much of its force in another. For 
this reason God has renewed again and again His communi- 

* Luke ii. 25, 38, i. 46-55. Comp. Pss. Sol. v. 13 ff. ; 2 Esdras xi. 42 ; Orac. 
Sib. iii. 49, etc. The Book of Baruch and 2 Esdras were probably not written 
till after the Fall of Jerusalem (a. d. 72), and are doubtless influenced directly 
and indirectly by Christian hopes. 

165 


1 66 


THE LIFE OF LIVES. 


cations with mankind. From the first dim promise of 
deliverance to the fallen progenitors of the human race — 
from the days of Enoch, and Noah, and Abraham, and 
Jacob, and Moses, again and again has 

“ God, stooping, showed sufficient of His light 
For those i* the dark to walk by.” 

Then came the succession of Prophets, from Samuel to 
Amos, and Isaiah to Malachi. After five centuries of 
Scribism, not unenlightened by the appearance of a few 
noble personalities like Judas the Maccabee and Simon the 
Just, and by a few great writers like the Son of Sirach, we 
come down to the Messianic era. The olden prophets had 
spoken of a coming Deliverer — a Davidic King, who should 
give victory, peace, and prosperity to His people ; or of a 
Servant of Jehovah, who should bear the sins of many. 
The Book of Daniel — the favourite book of the days of 
Christ* — and various Apocryphal books, of more recent 
date, pointed to the establishment of an everlasting king- 
dom, and looked for a return of Elijah, or one of the 
Prophets,! to prepare the way of its Founder. \ It was a 
current belief that Jeremiah might re-appear to restore to 
the nation the five missing glories of the Temple, some of 
which he was supposed to have hidden. § But in parts of 
the Book of Enoch (b. C. 70), and the Sibylline Prophecies, 
and in the Psalms of Solomon (b. C. 70-40), the belief in 
the Advent of a Davidic King had been revived,! though 

*Jos. Antt. x. 10, 11, B. J. vi. 5, 4. Josephus says that the popularity of 
the Book rose from the definite calculations which they founded upon it. They 
saw in the Roman Empire the “ fourth Beast ” of Daniel, which was to be 
followed by the Kingdom which should not be destroyed (Dan. vii. 13, 14). 

f Mai. iv. 5 ; Ecclus. xxxvi. 15, 16, xlix. 7 ; Mark vi. 15, viii. 28 ; Johni. 21, 
vi. 14, etc. 

\ 1 Macc. iv. 46, xiv. 41. Comp. Deut. xviii. 15 ; Wendt, Teaching of 
Jesus ,'i. 63. 

§ Matt. xvi. 14 ; John i. 21, vi. 14, vii. 40. In 2 Macc. xv. 13 ff. he appears 
in vision to strengthen his countrymen. 

| Enoch x. 16-38, xlvi. 1, lv. 4, lxii. 6, etc.; Sibyll. iii. 652-794 ; Pss. Sol. 


THE MESSIANIC HOPE. 167 

it is not found in the Assumption of Moses or the Book of 
Jubilees. The Psalms of Solomon were specially full of a 
passionate conviction that the day was at hand when the 
coming Messiah should cleanse Jerusalem with His sanctifi- 
cation, even as it was at the first, so that nations would 
come from the ends of the earth to behold its glory. “ No 
evil will prevail among them in those days , for all shall be 
holy, and their King is Christ the Lord."* The great 
Alexandrian thinker, Philo, though he moved for the most 
part in a region of chill philosophical abstractions, yet 
sometimes dwells on the coming glory of Messianic days, f 
Josephus, though intensely cautious lest he should offend 
his Roman patrons, shows that he, too, shared to some 
extent in the hopes of his people.:): Since the days of 
Queen Alexandra, many like Simeon and Joseph of Arima. 
thaea had been “ waiting for the Consolation of Israel ” and 
for the Kingdom of God ; so that at the coming of the 
Baptist § the people were in expectation, “and many 
reasoned in their hearts of John whether haply he were the 
Cfhrist.” | The generality of the expectation explains the 
daring violence of the Pharisaic youths who, at the instiga- 
tion of Matthias and Judas, destroyed the golden eagle 
which Herod had placed over the entrance-gate of his new 
Temple. It also accounts for the multitude of followers 
who gathered round Simon, Athronges, and Judas of 

xvii., xviii.; Wendt. /. c. It is clear from the Gospels that the conception was 
prominent in the minds of the people. Mark viii. 29, ix. 13, x. 47, xi. 10, xii. 
35, xiv. 61-64 ; John vi. 69, xii. 34. 

*Pss. Sol. xvii. 33, 36. The writer also exclaims : “Behold, O Lord, and 
raise up for them their King, David’s Son, in the time when Thou hast 
appointed, that he may reign over Israel thy servants.” The Psalter of 
Solomon may be read in Hilgenfeld’s Messias Judoeorum. It refers in many 
passages to a pure and mighty Messiah, who in Ps. xvii. is described as 
Xpioroq Kvpcog as in Lam. iv. 20 (lxx). 

f Philo, in his De execratione, and De prcem . et poen. 

\ B.J- v. 1, 3 ; Antt. iv. 6, 5, x. 10, 4. See Hausrath i. 199. 

§ Luke ii. 25-28 ; Mark xv. 43. 
j] Luke iii. 15. 


THE LIFE OF LIVES. 


1 68 

Galilee, and even such a miserable impostor as Theudas. 
The multitude clung with convulsive hope or despairing 
frenzy to almost anyone who seemed to promise any form 
or possibility of emancipation — to Hyrcanus ; to the beau- 
tiful young High Priest Aristobulus ; to the impostor 
Alexander; to Agrippa I.; — some Jews even regarded 
Herod the Great as a Divinely appointed Deliverer;* while 
Josephus looked, or professed to look, to Vespasian and the 
power of Rome as a source of hope for the future. It was 
not until after the final overthrow of Bar Cochba, “ the Son 
of a Star ” (a. D. 135), that such movements became impos- 
sible for ever. With the enthusiastic Pharisee, Rabbi 
Akiba, ended the Rabbinic Schools, which expected for 
Israel a temporal deliverance. 

The older Messianic Hope had mainly concerned itself 
with the future glories of Israel ; the later form of Messi- 
anic Expectation began to regard the Messiah as the 
Deliverer of the whole world, and the Comforter of indi- 
vidual miseries. It also enriched and enlarged the horizon 
of mortal life by the doctrine of a future Resurrection — in 
which the Pharisees believed, though it was rejected by the 
Priests and Sadducees. The Olam Habbah, or “ future 
aeon,” was to be in every respect more splendid and happy 
than the Olam Hazzeh , or “ present aeon.” But the happy 
age was to be preceded by days of immense tribulation, of 
which the only alleviation lay in the knowledge that they 
were “ the birth-throes ” ( oodivei : Matt. xxiv. 8 ; Mark xiii. 
8 ; B. J. vi. 5, 4), the Chebly Hammeshiach, or travail-pangs 
of the Messiah (Hos. xiii. 13). 

Such expectations had even been disseminated in the 
heathen world. They have left their traces on the pages of 
Horace and of Virgil. “ In the whole East,” says Sue- 
tonius, “ had prevailed an ancient and fixed opinion, that, 
at this time, it was a decree of destiny that some who came 
from Judaea would become masters of the whole world. 

*See Keim i. 300 ff. (Tert. Praescr. 45). 


* THE MESSIANIC HOPE. 169 

Events subsequently proved that such a prophecy had some 
reference to a Roman Emperor; but the Jews, forcing its- 
interpretation to themselves, rose in rebellion.” Josephus 
was probably the first who gave this interpretation to the 
prophecy. Tacitus, like Suetonius, attributes the revolt 
of the Jews to their perverted application to themselves of 
a prediction which referred to the Roman Conquerors.* 
The rumoured appearance of the Phoenix in Egypt, after 
the lapse of many centuries, excited the wildest surmise in 
an age which felt that the mass of mankind had sunk into a 
condition too horrible for continuance, and which had been 
affrighted by endless misfortunes and omens.f Men had 
also been deeply moved by the story of the cry, “ Great 
Pan is dead! which had been heard by the sailors in the 
reign of Tiberius, and had evoked a burst of multitudinous 
wailing. Before things had assumed their worst aspect, 
Virgil, in his vaticination of the future glories of the son of 
Asinius Pollio, had sung:§ 

“ Aspice convexo nutaritem pondere mundum 
Terraeque tractusque maris, ccelumque profundum, 

Adspice venturo laetantur ut omnia saeclo ! ” 

The restless belief as to some overwhelmingly important 
world-crisis, which would have its origin in Eastern lands, 
affected even the most godless of Roman Emperors. It 
was the passionate desire of Caius Caligula to set up the 
gilded colossus of himself in the Temple of Jerusalem. As 
we have seen, Poppsea, the wife of Nero, was, according to 
Josephus, a Jewish proselyte;! and Nero himself had been 
taught, perhaps by Jews, to look to the East, and even to 
Jerusalem, as the seat of a future dominion.^ 

It was not strange that, amid the deep and ever-deepen- 
ing darkness, men should be expectant of a coming Dawn. 

* Tac. Hist. V. 13. fTac. Ann. vi. 28-51. 

X Plut. De Defect. Orac. 17. §J 5 V/. iv. Comp. Orac. Sibyll. 784 ff. 

|| [<>s. Fit. 3 ; Antt. xx. 8, 11. Comp. Tac. Ann. xvi. 6. 

Juet. Nero, 40. See Keim, i. 326. 


THE LIFE OF LIVES. 


170 

It is, however, important to observe that the True Messiah 
was so little the natural evolution of current Messianic 
expectations that, coming neither as a King nor as a Vic- 
tor, nor as a temporal Emancipator of His people, nor as a 
mere man at all, but as a Divine and crucified Nazarene, 
He reversed and violated all the most cherished expecta- 
tions of His land and age. He was not “ a more victorious 
Joshua, a more magnificent Herod, a wider-reaching Caesar, 
a wiser Moses, a holier Abraham.” He was no burning 
Isaiah, no vengeful Elijah, no learned Hillel, or passionate 
Akiba — no ringleader of rising multitudes, like Judas the 
Gaulonite, or Bar Cochba. 

“ He came, but not in regal splendour drest — 

The haughty diadem, the Tyrian vest ; 

Not armed in flame all glorious from afar, 

Of hosts the Captain, and the Lord of war 

but He came as “ the Carpenter,” as the meek and lowly, as 
the wearer of the crown of thorns ; and He established His 
claim as Universal Victor by means of a few obscure and 
timid followers, after He had perished amid the banded 
obloquies of His nation and of His age. 


CHAPTER XV. 


JOHN THE BAPTIST. 

" This is Elijah which was for to come.” — Matt. xi. 14. 

“ John, than which man a sadder and a greater 
Not till this day had been of woman born ; 

John, like some iron peak by the Creator 

Fired with the red glow of the rushing morn.” 

— F. Myers. 

When the hour has struck — when “ the shadow has 
-crept to the appointed line on the dial-plate of destiny ” — 
God calls forth the man. 

The chief need of the world is the death-defying courage 
of true men. The only power which can reclaim the world 
in ages of sloth, decadence, and self-deceiving religionism is 
the power of insight and burning sincerity which He 
inspires into the hearts of saints and Prophets. No prayer 
is more constantly needed than that God would grant to 
His Church a succession of men , — not of incarnate conven- 
tionalities, who think that the truth will perish with them , 
or that it has been frozen for ever in channels of stagnant 
function. Through such channels the living water flows no 
longer. The cry which springs spontaneously from our 
hearts is — 

“ God give us men ! A time like this demands 
Great hearts, strong minds, true faith, and willing hands ; 

Men whom the lust of office does not kill, 

Men whom the spoils of office cannot buy, 

Men who possess convictions and a will, 

Men who have honour, men who dare not lie.” 

This has been felt even in heathen lands. We know how 
Diogenes went through the streets of Athens with a lan- 

171 


THE LIFE OF LIVES. 


1 72 

tern, seeking for a man ; and when some of the crowd came 
to him he beat them away with the contemptuous exclama- 
tion, “ I want men ; ye are GHvftaXa.” Much more has it 
been felt in Churches which have stagnated into pretence 
and unreality under the ruinous influences of priestly 
usurpation. “ Run ye to and fro through the streets of 
Jerusalem,” said Jeremiah, “and see now, and know, and 
seek in the broad places thereof, if ye can find a man y if 
there be any that doeth justly and seeketh faithfulness, and 
I will pardon her.”* But he could find no such man. 
There were many who said, “ The Lord liveth,” but they 
swore falsely, and made their faces harder than a rock even 
against chastisement. And if these were fnainly the poor 
and foolish, the great men and leaders were even worse.. 
They had altogether broken the yoke and burst the bands. 
The nation as a nation continued to trust in dead formulae 
which, so used, had dwindled into lying words. “ Ignorant 
of God’s righteousness and seeking to establish their own, 
they did not subject themselves to the righteousness of 
God.”f Convinced that they were themselves righteous, 
and despising others, they had degraded God into the 
leader of a sect, and in their opinionated infallibility furi~ 
ously condemned and did their utmost to suppress, by mean 
slanders and by open or subterranean violence, those who 
had some glimpses of the true light. Like the snail* 
which, as the Hindoo proverb says, “ sees nothing but its 
own shell, and thinks it the grandest place in the universe,” 
so they saw nothing beyond the pettinesses which they 
glorified as though they were the essence of holy service. 

Out of the heart of this spiritual stagnancy which had 
lost sight of righteousness in ritualism, and fancied that a 
mass of meaningless minutiae were essential things; out 
of the very heart of this dead and half-putrescent system* 
which was abundantly breeding its “ offspring of vipers ” \ 

* Jer. v. 1-9. f Rom. x. 3. 

X This phrase yew^ara e X idvcov (Matt. iii. 7; Luke iii. 7 ; “ serpentes ex 


173 


JOHN THE BAPTIST. 

God called a MAN. He was by birth a priest, the son 
of a priest of the order of Abijah, and was therefore 
in a position to observe at first hand the moral decay of a 
sacerdotalism which within was full of extortion and excess. 
The mission of John expressed a revolt against Levitism, 
and a republication — as from a new Sinai — of the eternal 
moral law. It was a declaration that religion means “ a 
good mind and a good life,” and that when it ceases to 
mean this, it means worse than nothing. It was a preach- 
ing of the old, simple, obliterated truth that “ the righteous 
Lord loveth righteousness .” John came, as our Lord said, 
“ in the way of righteousness .”* His mission was a return 
to the mighty moral teaching of those old prophets who 
were the glory of Hebraism. John the Baptist did not so 
much as allude to one of the myriad rules of Pharisaism. 
Priest and Nazarite though he was, he did not once refer to 
the ceremonial law to which the current orthodoxy made 
the Prophets a mere appendage. But he re-echoed, in tones 
of thunder, the burning messages of the Prophets them- 
selves, and especially of Isaiah. The essence of his teach- 
ing was to be found in the messages of “ the Evangelical 
Prophet,” of Amos, Micah, Jeremiah, and Hoshea. 

His aspect emphasised his message. His preached not 
in Temple or synagogue, but among the wild rocks of “ the 
appalling desolation ” ( Jeshimon ), in the Valley of the Dead 
Sea, “ the haunt of thirst, where the dragons and demons 
howl.” He wore no priestly vestments, but a shaggy skin.f 
His girdle was a strip of untanned leather — not a girdle of 
fine linen embroidered with threads of gold and silver, like 
those worn by such as lived in kings’ houses. His food 
was such as nature supplied. It consisted of the wild 
honey which exudes from the leaves of tropical plants, or is 


serpentibus ”) is not found in the Old Testament, but was twice used by our 
Lord (Matt. xii. 34, xxiii. 33). 

* Matt. xxi. 32. 

f 2 Kings i. 8; Zech. xiii. 4; Is. iii. 24; Heb. xi. 37. 


1 74 


THE LIFE OF LIVES. 


/ 

left by the bees in the clefts of the rocks ;* and of the 
locusts, which the south wind swept from Arabia, and 
scattered among the valleys of the Dead Sea, but which 
few could eat without disgust.f John poured open scorn 
on all luxury. He came like a new Elijah, in all the uncom- 
promising sternness of his prototype.;); He did not preach 
smooth things and prophesy deceits, but told of One whose 
fan was in His hand, who should thoroughly purge His 
floor, and burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire. This 
constituted the terribly original feature of his message. 
“Of all the Messianic passages which we find written in 
Sibyls, Apocalypses, and Jubilees, not one has struck this 
tone, which fell like rolling thunder on the ears of the 
people.” 

His preaching was avowedly preparative — it was that of 
a Forerunner. He told the deputation of Priests and 
Levites which came to him from Jerusalem that he was 
not the Messiah, nor Elijah, nor the expected Prophet, but 
that he was “ the Voice of one crying in the wilderness, 
Make straight the way of the Lord, as said the Prophet 
Isaiah.” John baptised with water only, as a preparation 
for Him who already stood among them, though they 
knew Him not, who should baptise them with the Holy 
Ghost and with fire, but who would not be finally mani- 
fested except after a time of judgment — “the great and 
terrible day of the Lord.” 

John’s preaching aimed at religious awakenment. The 
priests were indolently absorbed in “ sacrificing and cele- 
brating,” and were sunk in greed, routine, and ambitious 
worldliness. The masses of the people and of their 
teachers were trusting in lying words, saying, “ We be 
Abraham’s sons ” ; and in outward privileges — “ The 

* Jos. B. J. iv. 8. 

f All kinds of locusts are allowed to be eaten in Lev. xi. 22. They were 
dried and salted. Jer. in Jovin. ii. Comp. Plin H. N. ii. 29, vi. 30. 

, % Mai. iii. 1-3 ; Ecclus. xlviii. 10, 11 ; Mark ix. 12. 


1 75 


JOHN THE BAPTIST. 

Temple of the Lord, the Temple of the Lord, the Temple 
of the Lord are these.” They were occupied with badges 
of party, and tithes of mint, anise, and cumin, and with 
artificial moralities which altogether benumbed the sense 
of truth and reality. The fogs needed to be scattered by 
thunder and hurricane. From the sickly and perfumed air 
of contentment with the infinitesimal, and hypocrisy as to 
the essential — from the conventional optimism “ which 
sweetened the present, and gilded the future with the lazy 
fancy of a well-fed piety ” — he roused them as with shocks 
of earthquake. It was not his to say smooth things and 
prophesy deceits ; not his to bow low before the idol of 
fashionable “ views,” nor “to glide softly into the hearts 
of party votaries.” His object was to tear off the 
mask from the pretenders who disguised themselves as 
angels of light, and to smite them in the face. The 
preaching of John was “as the sweeping storms of March 
before the soft rustling of the vernal breezes of the 
Gospel.” 

He stood up, an Incarnate Conscience rising in revolt 
against “ the shows and shams of a self-soothing piety.” 
This child — nurtured amid the free winds and lonely 
grandeur of the wilderness — represented Reality confront- 
ing Sham. What he demanded was genuine penitence and 
amendment of life. He had nothing to say about “ bowing 
the head like a bulrush,” offering sacrificial atonements, or 
being particular about fasts and feasts — but he thundered 
forth, “ Wash you, make you clean, put away the evil of 
your doings ; flee from the wrath to come ; bring forth 
fruits worthy of your repentance.” In all this (as we have 
seen) he was but returning to the central messages of the 
Old Testament Scriptures before the religion of Israel had 
been overlaid with the filmy network of Scribism and 
formality. * 

* The inmost essence of the Law is expressed in such passages as Lev. xxvi. 
40 ; Deut. iv. 29, xxx. 2 ; Isaiah i. 16, xlii. 24 ; Joel ii. 12 ; and passim. 


THE LIFE OF LIVES. 


1 76 

Hence his preaching was necessarily a preaching of 
repentance in the sternest of tones. Never was there a 
more fierce denouncer of disguised hypocrisy. “ Offspring 
of vipers,” he said to the Pharisees and Sadducees, “ who 
warned you to flee from the wrath to come ? Bring forth, 
therefore, fruit worthy of repentance. And think not to 
say within yourselves, ‘We have Abraham to our father,’ 
for I say unto you that God is able of these stones 
(Abanim) to raise up children ( Banim ) to Abraham.” He 
did not speak to Jews as a Jew, but as a man to men, “ that 
all men through him might believe.” Addressing his 
hearers quite irrespectively of their nationality or pre- 
rogatives, he discouraged the materialised hopes of his 
people no less than their boasted prerogatives. The things 
about which they prided themselves, and postured before 
others, were not of the smallest importance. Their fast- 
ings, their casuistical theologies, and multiplied ablutions — 
their phylacteries, whether broad or narrow — were beneath 
his notice. Their whole system of religion was but the 
blighted tree on which the axe, already at its backmost 
poise, should swoop with a final crash ; or as the barren 
chaff which should soon be burnt with unquenchable fire. 

The preaching of John dealt, as all true preaching should, 
with plain, simple, unconventional holiness. It is not the 
work of such men to compass heaven and earth to make 
one proselyte, and then to make him “ tenfold more the 
child of hell than themselves.” His work was to preach 
the “ pure, unsophisticated, dephlegmated, defaecated ” 
moral law; to tell the publicans to exact no more than that 
which was legal ; to bid the soldiers be content with their 
wages, to accuse none falsely, and to do no violence ; to 
convince the people that they must substitute righteous- 
ness for idle self-confidence, give alms to their fellow-men 
with the most ample and generous self-sacrifice, and by 
love serve one another.* 

No wonder that such preaching in the wild desert of 
* Matt. v. 40. 


1 77 


JOHN THE BAPTIST. 

Jeshimon — preaching so utterly new, so fearless, so heart- 
searching — uttered by a man who had broken with the 
traditional religionism of his day, and desired something 
deeper and more real than its narcotics, something higher 
and more heroical than its functions, something more heal- 
ing and essential than its petty effeminacies — caused multi- 
tudes to stream out to “ the horror ” of the desert, to see 
this “ shocking figure ” in camel’s skin and leathern girdle, 
who only cared to sustain life on locusts and wild honey. 
The religious despots might self-complacently pronounce 
that “ he had a demon,” but the multitude heard the mes- 
sage of God in the voice of a true man. Here was a man 
“ whose manifestation was like a burning torch ; whose 
whole life was a very earthquake ; whose whole being was a 
sermon.” Here was one who, alone among the teachers of 
his day, scornfully tore to shreds the rags of hypocrisy, and 
while he showed men that they were something better than 
“ hungers, thirsts, fevers, and appetites,” strove to bring 
them face to face with the Unseen, and make them realise 
the grandeur of God, and feel the supremacy of righteous- 
ness and true holiness.* 

But there was also an element of Hope in his discourses. 
Sharing in the intense Messianic expectations of the day, 
he promised the speedy advent of the stern yet righteous 
Deliverer, who should purify the air infected with heathen 
influences and Sadducean unbelief, f and pour life into a 
religion which had become like the thin iridescence over 
the stagnancy of a putrescent pool. 

The career of a Prophet or a true saint — especially if he 
denounces current unrealities, and shows no respect for 
dominant religious autocrats — is hardly complete unless it 

* The simple veracity and authenticity of the Gospels constantly find corrob- 
oration from external sources. The account of the Baptist receives an inde- 
pendent support in all essential features from the reticent narrative of Josephus. 

f The troubles raised by the Samaritan Messianic impostor (Jos. Antt. xviii. 
4, i, 2) may have partly arisen from the tension of mind caused by John’s 
teaching. 


THE LIFE OF LIVES. 


178 

be surrounded with the malice, hatred, and all uncharit- 
ableness of the world and of the nominal Church. The 
normal lot of the loftiest teachers is some form or other of 
martyrdom at. the hands of all who love falsity. Popu- 
larity, and party adulation, and the soft murmur of applause 
are not for such, but for those natures who, in self-complac- 
ent usurpation of prerogatives which are not theirs, answer 
the world according to its idols ! The stake, the dungeon, 
the torture-chamber, the roar of violent abuse, the viper’s 
hiss of creeping malice, the subterranean calumnies of reli- 
gious partisans, the bale-fires of the Inquisitors, have been 
the ordinary destiny of the noblest of the sons of God. 
Their crown and sceptre have been like those of their 
Saviour — a crown of torturing thorns, the sceptre of a 
mocking reed. Such is the teaching alike of the Old * and 
of the New Testament. f By Priests and Kings, “with 
fierce lies maddening the blind multitude,” the saints are 
stoned, are sawn asunder, are slain with the sword, desti- 
tute, afflicted, tormented, because the world is not worthy 
of them. And worst of all, much of their work often seems 
— though only seems — to have been in vain. 

So it was with St. John the Baptist. First came cold 
neglect and indifference, and the sneer of the religious- 
leaders that he was a demoniac ; J then the sword flashed, 
and the life of the noblest of the Prophets was shorn away. 
The “ viper’s brood,” the Pharisees and the Sadducees, the 
adulterous king, the wicked matron, the dancing girl, pre- 
vailed ; and all that was left of him, than whom no greater 
had been born of woman, was a head on a charger in a har- 
lot’s hand, and a bleeding trunk in the dungeon of a grim 
fortress among the desert hills. 

Nevertheless his work lived on. Not only did many, 

*1 Kings xix. 10 ; 2 Chr. xvi. 10, xxiv. 21 ; Jer. xxvi. 8, 23. 

f See Luke vi. 22, 23, 26 ; Matt. v. 11 : Mk. x. 29. 30 ; John xvii. 14 ; 
Acts v. 41, vii. 52 ; Rom. v. 3 ; 1 Thess. ii. 14, 15 ; Heb. xi. 36-38, xiii. 13 ; 
1 Pet. iii. 14, iv. 12, 16. 

\ Matt xiv. 8-12. 


JOHN THE BAPTIST. 179 

even at Ephesus, own his leadership nearly thirty years 
later (Acts xviii. 25, xix. 3), but — what was of infinitely 
greater importance — he had effectually prepared the way 
for Him “ whose shoe's latchet he was not worthy to 
unloose.” 

“ The last and greatest herald of heaven’s King, 

Girt with rough skins, hies to the deserts wild : 

His food was locusts, and what there doth spring, 

With honey that from virgin-hives distilled ; 

Then burst he forth, ‘ All ye whose hopes rely 
On God, with me among the deserts mourn : 

Repent ! repent ! and from old errors turn ! ’ 

Who listened to his voice, obeyed his cry ? 

Only the echoes which he made relent 

Rung from their flinty caves — 4 Repent ! repent ! * n 


CHAPTER XVI. 


THE BAPTISM OF JESUS. 

ovx "f hdea . . . all' vn£p tov yhovf 

tov rciv avBp&iruv. — Just. Mart. Dial. 88. 

The Ministry of St. John the Baptist falls into two well- 
marked epochs, separated from each other by the Baptism 
of Christ.* 

To Jesus, in His obscure and humble home, the thrill 
which passed through every section of society at the voice 
of the Baptist, and the appearance of a true Man among 
the ignoble shadows and self-satisfied hypocrisies, came as 
a sign from His Heavenly Father that the time had arrived 
for His manifestation to the world. For now, by John’s 
work as an avowed Forerunner, the long-slumbering hope 
was aroused, and, “ with mighty billows the Messianic 
movement surged through the entire people.” Was he the 
promised Forerunner, Elijah, whom in so many respects he 
resembled? Was he the expected Jeremiah come to 
restore to them the Ark and the Mercy Seat, and the Urim 
which he was supposed to have hidden in a cave on Mount 
NeboPf Many even wondered whether he might not him- 
self be the promised Messiah. “ All men mused in their 
hearts of John whether he were the Christ or not.” J 

In going to listen to the preaching of John, our Lord 
doubtless followed that inward guidance which was the 
supreme law of His life. He offered Himself for baptism. 
The full meaning of this act is beyond our apprehension. 

* It has not been my object to enter into questions of chronology, endlessly 
debated, and still undecided. Several modern authorities have concluded that 
Christ’s Baptism took place before the Passover in A. d. 27. 

f 2 Macc. ii. 1-7. 


180 


X Luke iii. 15. 


THE BAPTISM OF JESUS. 181 

The baptism of John was no mere Essene or Levitical 
ablution. It was accompanied by the confession of sins. 
It was not “ a laver of regeneration ” (Tit. iii. 5), but “ a 
baptism of repentance.” It was a sign that a man desired 
to cleanse himself from moral defilement, to abandon all 
righteousness of his own, and “ to draw nigh unto God in 
full assurance of faith, having his heart sprinkled from an 
evil conscience, and his body washed with pure water.” * 
How, then, could it be accepted by the Divine and sinless 
Son of Man ? To others — but not to Him — could have 
been applied the words of Ezekiel, “ Then will I sprinkle 
clean water upon you, and ye shall be clean.” f All that we 
know is what the Gospels tell us. We see that the stern 
Prophet, who was no respecter of persons, but had dared to 
address Scribes and Pharisees in words of scornful denunci- 
ation, was overawed before the innate majesty of the Son 
of God. This new Elijah, in his shaggy robe of camel’s 
hair with its coarse leathern girdle — this ascetic dweller in 
the deserts — this herald whose voice rang with sternest 
rebukes to startle drowsy souls, and stir them to repentance 
— is at once hushed into timidity at the Presence of the 
Lord of Love. So far from welcoming the acknowledg- 
ment of his ministry by one whom he instinctively recog- 
nised as his Lord, he made an earnest and continuous effort 
to prevent Him from accepting his baptism.;); He even 
said, “ / have need to be baptised of Thee , and comest 
Thou to Met ” But the only explanation given to us is in 
the words of our Lord Himself. He overcame John’s 
hesitating scruples by saying, “ Suffer it to be so now ; for 
thus it becometh us to fulfil all righteousness.” § “ He 

* Heb. x. 22. f Ezek. xxxvi. 25. (Is. i. 16 ; Zech. xiii. 1.) 

\ Matt. iii. 14, dten&fojev. The Baptjsm of Christ seems to have been a soli- 
tary one. It took place apparently “ after all the people were baptised ” (Luke 
iii. 21), and may have been in a measure private. 

§ This may possibly mean, as Dean Alford says, “ to fulfil all the claims or 
requirements (diKatcjuara) of the Law according to the definition of St. Chrys- 
ostom,” SiKacoavv7j yap eotlv rj tuv hroluv kuTTTJjpua^. 


182 


THE LIFE OF LIVES. 


placed the confirmation of perfect righteousness,” says St. 
Bernard, “ in perfect humility.” * Many have supposed 
that He only submitted to the baptism as a corporate act, 
desiring to identify Himself with the nation whose guilt 
He came to bear and remove; others that He accepted it 
vicariously and solely for the sake of mankind ; f others 
that He regarded the act for Himself personally as a con- 
secration to the Messianic kingdom.^ Others, again, have 
thought that as, to the mass of the people, the immer- 
sion in the Jordan and the rising out of the water indicated 
a death unto sin and a new life unto righteousness, so to 
Christ it marked by way of symbol the close of His former 
life of seclusion, and the entrance into that Divine mission 
to which he was henceforth dedicated. § Whatever be the 
exact explanation, it was as He went up out of the water, 
and stood praying, that both to Him and to the Baptist the 
sign was given which had been promised, and which led 
John to recognise Jesus as the Messiah, the Son of God. 
He beheld the Spirit, probably in some gleam of heavenly 
brightness, descending out of the parted heavens as a 
dove || with soft and hovering motion, and abiding upon 
Him,^[ while a Voice from Heaven said, “This is my 

* St. Bernard, Serm. 47 in Cant. ; St. Bonaventura, Vit. Christi xiii. 

f This is the oldest explanation, and is found as early as Justin Martyr 
Dial c. Tryph. 88. Comp. John i. 29. Our Baptismal office says, “ He sanc- 
tified water to the mystical washing away of sin.” Comp. Ps. Aug. Serrt. 
145, 4 ; Ignat, ad Eph. 18 . Maxim Serm. 7, de Epiphan. 

% Eph. i. 22. Comp. Ex. xxix. 4 ; Lev. viii. 1-30, xiv. 8. 

§See Is. lii. 15 ; Ezek. xxxvi. 25 ; Zech. xiii. 1. 

I The text does not say that the Spirit actually took the form of a dove. 
The ouuaTiKG eISel. of Luke iii. 22, does not necessarily imply more than a vis- 
ible appearance. It seems more in accordance with other analogies to suppose 
that like the outpouring of the Spirit at Pentecost (Acts ii. 7) the appearance 
was “ like as of fire” (comp. Matt. iii. 11). The dove was indeed a fitting 
emblem of innocence and gentleness ; but Irenseus, arguing that the Logos was 
united to Jesus at baptism, proves this by Gematria, since irspioTEpa = 801 = 
X H (Rev. i. 8, 11, xxi. 6, xxii. 13 ; Iren. C. Haer. i. 14, 6). 

IT epxfywov etC avrov, Matt. iii. 16 ; Is. xi. 2 ; Luke iii. 22 ; KaTafiaivov el? 
avrdv ( b . d . etc.), lit. “ descending into Him,” Mark i. 10. “ Of all the fowls 


THE BAPTISM OF JESUS. 183 

beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.” Henceforth 
Jesus felt Himself finally consecrated by the will of His 
Father to be the Founder of the kingdom of heaven on 
earth. As a man He now became fully “conscious of a 
power of the Spirit within Him corresponding to the new 
form of His work.” * 

After this it was destined that Jesus should increase and 
John decrease. For though John was “the lamp kindled 
and burning,” his work showed the inevitable limitations 
•of all human work. He preached the preliminaries neces- 
sary for the advent of the Kingdom ; it was beyond his 
power to found the Kingdom itself. Indeed, it is probable 
that though he differed so widely from the religious 
teachers of his day in his moral ideals, he may have shared 
in their special Messianic hopes. He may have looked, not 
for a suffering, but for a triumphant Christ — for one who 
should be a magnificent Potentate and Deliverer of His 
nation — though the establishment of His Kingdom was to 
be preceded by earthquake and eclipse, such as the Hebrew 
Prophets had foretold.f Softened in tone as his ministry 
had evidently been by the appearence of Jesus, it is very 
likely that he failed to understand a Messiah at whose 
presence the nations did not tremble, nor the mountains 
visibly flow down ; who was not outwardly “ a consuming 
fire,” and did not do terrible things in His wrath.;); The 
humble humanity, and untempestuous quietude of a Deliv- 
erer who did not strive nor cry, neither was His voice 
heard in the streets, became a decided stumbling-block in 
the path of his Messianic faith.g Jesus did not attempt to 
found any such earthly kingdom as John had imagined. 
The whole ideal of the Saviour’s work was different from 

that are created, Thou hast named thee one Dove,” 2 Esdr. v. 26. Ps. lv. 6 ; 
Is. lix. 11 : Matt. x. 16. Justin Martyr says ( c . Tryph. 88) that a fire or light 
was kindled in the Jordan. 

* Bishop Westcott on John i. 34. 

X Is. lxiv. 1-3. 


f Is. xiii. 9 ; Zeph. i. 14. 
§ Matt. xi. 6. 


184 


THE LIFE OF LIVES. 


that of John. He did not frequent the wilderness, or 
appear as an ascetic in hairy garb, or hurl thunderbolts. 
He moved about in lowly simplicity as a man with men — 
and that among the most stained and despised outcasts, 
whom Pharisees and Sadducees would not touch with the 
hem of their garments. 

After the Baptist’s work had culminated in the pointing 
out of the Messiah, he seems to have lost much of his 
power and insight. His disciples, if not he himself, began 
to mistake means for ends. They did not become direct 
disciples of Jesus. There austere self-denials did not meet 
with our Lord’s approval. Outward asceticism — like that 
of the Pharisees — was brought by them into injurious prom- 
inence. This was to put a patch of undressed cloth upon 
an old garment. What was intended to fill up the rent only 
made it worse. It was to put unfermented wine into old 
wine-skins. The new wine fermented, in contact with the 
yeasty particles left adhering to the leather — “ the skins 
burst and the wine was spilled.” * There is something 
infinitely pathetic in the fact that, in the gloomy recesses of 
his frightful dungeon, haunted by demons and surrounded 
by inaccessible crags, doubt as to Him whom he had 
pointed out as the promised Christ seems for a moment to 
have overshadowed the Baptist’s soul. “ A reed shaken by 
the wind ” he was not, and could not be ; but he might be 
compared to “ a cedar, half uprooted by the storm.” He 
foretold, he announced, the Kingdom of Christ, but can 
hardly be said to have entered into it, so that — on the 
principle “ minimum maximi est majus maximo minimi ” — 
he who is but little (o /* inponpo i) in the kingdom of 
heaven was greater than he.f Nevertheless, Jesus pro- 
nounced on him the splendid eulogy that “ Of them that 
have been born of women there is none greater than John 
the Baptist ” ; and we may feel sure that any doubt which 
may have crossed his mind was dispelled by the merciful 

* Matt. ix. 14, xi. 14, xxi. 32 ; Luke, v. 33. f Matt. xi. 11. 


THE BAPTISM OF JESUS. 185 

forbearance of Him whom he had pointed out as the Lamb 
of God that taketh away the sins of the world. It disap- 
peared for ever in the glorious light of that world where 
all is judged of truly. There he would learn the meaning 
of Christ’s saying, “ The kingdom of God is within you,” * 
and that they only can enter it, who enter it in the spirit of 
little children, with meekness and perfect self-surrender.f 

* ’Evrof v/acru. Vulg. intra vos est (i. e., in anitnis vestris). This meaning 
seems to be the correct one. Comp. Rom. xiv. 17 ; Deut. xxx. 14. The 
“ Kingdom of God ” is not only an external, but an ethical condition, 
f Luke xvii. 20, 2 1 ; Matt, xviii. 3. 


CHAPTER XVII. 


THE TEMPTATION. 

“ Thou shalt tread upon the lion and the adder, the young lion and 
the dragon shalt thou trample under foot.” — Ps. xci. 13. 

U^ovOev avrog TreipaoOeig. — Heb. ii. 1 8, iv. 15. 

A id. rovg aoQevovvrag r/oQivow, nal Sup rovg ireivuvrag eireivav, kcu did tov g 
dityuvrag ed'npov — “Unwritten Saying” of Christ. — O riG. (in Matt. xvii. 
21). 

“ Omnis diabolica ilia Tentatio forts non intus fuit.” — Greg. M. 
Horn. i. 16. 

“ Thou Spirit that ledd’st this glorious Eremite 
Into the desert, His victorious field 
Against the spiritual foe, and brought’st Him thence 
By proof the undoubted Son of God.” 

—Milton, Par. Reg. 1. 

Little as we may think it right to enter into the bound- 
less field of speculation, yet the history of the Temptation 
of our Lord is of such importance to a right understanding 
of all that is revealed respecting Him in the Gospels as to 
demand our patient endeavour to understand it aright. 

It is narrated most circumstantially in the first and third 
Gospels. In St. Mark it is compressed into one character- 
istic but vivid verse, and he alone tells us, both, that “ He 
was with the wild beasts,” and that “ angels were continu- 
ously ministering ( dirjHovovr ) unto Him.” As St. John 
was not professing to write a complete narrative, but 
intended only to supplement in certain essential particulars 
the records of the three Synoptic Gospels, it did not fall 
within the scope of his work to narrate it once more. Yet, 
so far was this from being — as it has been falsely repre- 
sented — a designed suppression intended to exalt the 


THE TEMPTATION. 


187 

Divinity of Christ, that St. John, no less than the other 
Evangelists, shows us that the soul of Jesus could be 
troubled and perplexed;* and that He regarded His work 
as a triumph over the Prince of this world, f who, through 
Him, should be “ cast out ” when He should draw all men 
unto Him. St. John also describes temptation as due to 
the direct influence of Satan;;): he quotes the words of 
Jesus — which describe the result of the Tempation — that 
“ the Prince of this world cometh, and hath nothing in 
Me ” ;§ and says that Christ should “convict the world 
in respect of judgment, because the Prince of this world 
hath been judged.” 

The author of the Epistle to the Hebrews greatly helps 
us to apprehend the significance of the Temptation when 
he writes : 

“ We have not a High Priest who cannot be touched 
with the feeling of our infirmities, but one that hath been 
in all points tempted like as we are , yet without sin.” || 

And again : 

“ Wherefore it behoved Him in all things to be made 
like unto His brethren, that He might be a merciful and 
faithful High Priest in things pertaining to God, to make 
propitiation for the sins of the people. For in that He 
Himself hath suffered being tempted, He is able to succour 
them that are tempted. ”T 

“ We may represent the truth to ourselves best,” says 
Bishop Westcott, “ by saying that Christ assumed human- 
ity under the conditions of life belonging to man fallen, 
though not with sinful promptings from within. yy 

First then let us consider the occasion, the locality, 
and the circumstances of the Temptation. 

Christ — who “ lived in a tent like ours, and of the same 
material,” seeing that, as all the Gospels and Epistles teach 
us, He was “ perfectly man ” — must have been swayed in 

* John xii. 27. f John xii. 31. % John xiii. 27. 

§ John xiv. 30. 1 Heb. iii. 15. IT Heb. ii. 17, 18. 


THE LIFE OF LIVES. 


1 88 

His human soul no less than in the mortal body by the 
conditions which affect humanity. To Him therefore 
the Baptism in the waters of Jordan, the opening heavens 
which indicated a new relation with God, the Divine Voice 
which called Him a Beloved Son, the descent of the Holy 
Spirit upon and into Him,* there to abide in plenitude, 
were the signs that the hour was at hand to begin His 
Messianic work of Redemption. It was, as it were, the 
final call to come forth from the Galilean village, and fulfil 
His eternal purpose as the Teacher and Deliverer of man- 
kind. In proportion as we realise the stupendous char- 
acter of the work shall we be able to understand the 
profound human emotion with which the Son of Man 
contemplated the as yet unknown events and destines of 
His earthly mission. In all such high hours of visitation 
from the Living God there is, and must be, an intensity of 
feeling which pervades the whole being, and creates an im- 
perious demand for solitude and meditation. Man must be 
alone, and “ of the people there must be none with him/*' 
when he treads the winepress of his decisive hours. We can 
therefore understand the expression of St. Matthew and 
St. Luke that “ then He was led up into the wilderness ” 
and that “ full of the Holy Spirit, He was led in the Spirit 
into the wilderness ” ; and even the more forcible phrase of 
St. Mark : “ straightway the Spirit driveth Him forth into 
the wilderness. ”f In the Old Testament, Moses and 
Elijah had spent forty days of spiritual crisis in lonely 
places, and Paul, after his conversion, retired to Arabia. 

“Into the wilderness”: — we cannot say with certainty 
what wilderness it was, for the tradition which gives its 
name to the desert of the Forty Days ( Quarantania ) is 
quite uncertain ; but the awful associations with which 
Jewish imagination filled these solitudes would correspond 
with the tension of the spirit of Jesus. “ He was,” says St. 


* Mark i. io, ek avrdv, v. 1. 


\ Comp. Ezek. viii. 3 ; Acts viii. 39, 


THE TEMPTATION. 


189 

Mark, “ with the wild beasts.”* The Prophet Isaiah had 
spoken of the Tsiyyim , and Ochim , and Iyyim , “ the 
droughty ones ” and “ shaggy monsters and groaners,” 
“ the daughters of screaming, ”f the owls, and the arrow- 
snakes, and Lilith, “ the night fairy,” % — half demoniac 
creatures which made their homes amid its wild vegetation. 
Those rugged and desolate places were also the dwelling 
place of Azazel, the demon to whom the scapegoat was dis- 
missed^ “ When the evil spirit is gone out of a man, he 
walketh through dry places ” — through the stony, waterless 
deserts — “ seeking rest, and he findeth it not.”| The evil 
demon of “ the dry places ” was associated with the thought 
of temptation, and there our Lord was tempted, as in 
famine and solitude He Wrestled mentally with the vast 
problems of His predestined work. He felt an irrepres- 
sible impulse to be alone in spirit with His Heavenly 
Father, however much He might be surrounded by the 
snares of the Evil One. He did not indeed feel the stings 
of privation — scant as must have been the nourishment 
which the wilderness afforded— till the close of the forty 
days ; for it was only at their close — so St. Matthew tells us 
— that “afterwards He hungered.” But the Temptation, 
though it was subsequently concentrated into three mighty 
special assaults, was, in its essence, continuous. “ He was 
in the wilderness forty days, being tempted by the devil" 
says St. Mark, and St. Luke uses the same expression. It 
was a period of mental strain and moral struggle, and it 
involved the decisive victory over the assaults of Satan. 
Henceforth it became possible for all to experience the 
truth of the promise given by St. James, the Lord’s 
brother, “ Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.” 

Two truths we must firmly apprehend. 

(i.) One is that the Temptation was real, not a mere sem- 
blance. Our Lord, under stress of genuine temptation, had 

f Is. xiii! 21. 

|| Matt. xii. 43. 


* See Job v. 22, 23. 
JIs. xxxiv. 13-15. 


§ Lev. xvi. 8, 10, 20. 


190 


THE LIFE OF LIVES. 


to win the victory, in man and for man, by evincing self- 
denial, self-control, disregard for selfish advantage ; absolute 
renunciation of power, honour, and self-gratification ; and 
complete self-surrender to His Heavenly Father’s will. If 
the struggle had not been an actual struggle, there would 
have been no significance in the victory. The Gospels 
represent Jesus as subject to temptations from without, not 
only at this crisis, but during all His life. He said to 
Peter, “Get thee behind Me, Satan: thou art a stumbling- 
block unto Me ” ; * and He said to His Apostles, “Ye are 
they which have continued with Me in my temptations.” f 
The only difference between the temptations of Christ and 
our own is that His came from without, but ours come also 
from within. In Him “ the tempting opportunity ” could 
not appeal to “ the susceptible disposition.” With us sin 
acquires its deadliest force because we have yielded to it. 
We can only conquer it when, by the triumph of God’s 
grace within us, we are able to say with the dying hero of 
Azincour, “ Get thee hence, Satan ; thou hast no part in 
me; my part is in the Lord Jesus Christ.” 

(ii.) The other truth which must be firmly grasped is that 
the force and reality of the outward temptation did not 
impair — nay, it illustrated — Christ’s sinlessness. It is, as 
Luther said, one thing to feel temptation (sentire tenta- 
tionem), and quite another thing to yield to it ( assentire 
tentationi)\ or, as our own great poet so well expresses it : 

“ 'Tis one thing to be tempted, Escalus, 

Another thing to fall.” 

The temptations came to Christ externally, through the 
craft and subtlety of the devil, and, in defeating them, He 
illustrated His own parable about the conquest of the Evil 
One : “ When the strong man, fully armed, guardeth his 
own court, his goods are in peace ; but when a stronger 
than he shall come upon him, he taketh from him his whole 
* Matt. xvi. 23. f Luke xxii. 28. 


THE TEMPTATION. 


191 

armour wherein he trusted, and divideth the spoil.” By 
His victory He gave power over the demons to all who 
trust in Him, so that in all the power of the enemy nothing 
should be able to hurt them. And for this very end has 
He been manifested, “that He might destroy the works of 
the devil.” * He did not, like the parents of our fallen 
race, dabble with temptation, or go halfway to meet it, but, 
by the instant rejection of it with the whole force of His 
inner nature, He secured His transcendent and perfect 
victory. 

The question how the details of the Temptation became 
known to the Apostles and Evangelists is not specially 
important, but the answer to it seems clear. They could 
only have learnt it from the Lord Himself. Nor, again, is 
it in any way essential for the lessons which the narrative 
is designed to teach us, whether we suppose that, in reveal- 
ing it, He clothed the essential facts under the veil of sym- 
bols or not. If He did so, it was only that we might have 
a more vivid apprehension of truths which it would have 
been impossible for us to understand had they been 
expressed in spiritual or metaphysical terms. Nor need we 
enter into the discussion as to whether Satan appeared to 
Christ in a visible shape or not. There is nothing in the 
form of expression which forces this conclusion upon us, 
anymore than in our Lord’s words, “ I was gazing on Satan 
fallen as lightning from heaven.” f Even the question as to 
the personality of the Tempter is one which does not con- 
cern us here. It is sufficient to say that Satan, the Accuser, 
the Tempter, the Destroyer, is set before us throughout the 
New Testament as a really existent and concrete being, and, 
in any case, there exists for every one of us, as we know by 
fatal experience, a reality of evil without us, “ a force not 
ourselves ” which impels to all sin and unrighteousness, and 
which it is our perpetual duty, as well as our only safety, 
to resist to the uttermost. 

* 1 John iii. 8. 


f Luke x. 17, neadvra. 


192 


THE LIFE OF LIVES. 


It is much more important for us to observe that the three 
temptations of our Lord fall generally under the compre- 
hensive summary under which St. John sums up all forms 
of temptation, namely, those that arise from “ the lust of 
the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life.” * We 
are perhaps hardly in a position to decide whether the order 
of the Temptations as given by St. Matthew or that as given 
by St. Luke is the more exact. In spiritual crises we can- 
not take note of the ordinary sequences of time ; they 

“ Crowd eternity into an hour, 

And stretch an hour into eternity.” 

It is clear from the expressions used by St. Mark and St. 
Lukef that, though the temptations of Satan came to a head 
in one great final conflict, they were, in some shape or other, 
continuous ; and our Lord’s victory -is our example, that we 
are not to love the world, neither the things that are in the 
world, for if any man love the world the love of the Father 
is not in him. “Nothing rises higher than its source. The 
desire of things earthly, as though they were ends in them- 
selves, comes from the world, and is bounded by the world. 
It is, therefore, incompatible with the love of the Father.” 

(i.) The first appeal of Satan was an appeal to the desire 
of the flesh in its simplest and most innocent form. It was 
a temptation through suffering. It was not a temptation to 
cpiXrjdoria , the love of pleasure for its own sake, but rather 
to the exercise of an inherent power for the extinction of 
pain. Nothing could seem more plausible than the sugges- 
tion that Jesus should appease the pangs of hunger by the 
exercise of a prerogative which had been conferred on Him. 
The wilderness abounds in stones, which sometimes look 
like melons or cucumbers, and sometimes bear the exact 

* I John ii. 16. 

f Mark i. 12 ; Luke iv. 2, 7 TEipa{ 6 fievoc. Comp. xxii. 28, “ ye are they who 
have continued with Me in my temptations” Heb. iv. 15, He “was in all 
points tempted like as we are, yet without sin.” 

\ These stones are known as septaria. 


THE TEMPTATION. 


i93 


appearance of loaves of bread. It would make hunger more 
keen to see the semblance of food. And had not God fed 
His whole people with manna in the wilderness in answer to 
their cry? And had He not sustained Moses during the 
forty days of awful communion on Sinai ? And had not an 
angel ministered to the needs of the unhappy and fugitive 
Elijah ? And had not a voice from the heavens, which 
seemed to be bursting open to their depths,* accompanied 
by the hovering gleam of the descending Spirit, proclaimed 
Him to be the beloved Son in whom God was well pleased ? 
What could be more natural, what more harmless, than that 
He should, under these circumstances, work the miracle 
which was suggested to Him ? If He did so would it not 
be a decisive test whether such a power were absolutely 
His or not ? 

He now knew Himself to be called to His work as the 
promised Messiah. Was it not one popular conception of 
the Messiah’s work that, like Moses, He should again feed 
His people with bread from heaven ?f Was not this a 
most favourable opportunity to exercise this power for the 
supply of His own urgent needs, that, having thus tested 
its reality, He might ever afterwards put it forth for the 
blessing of the world which He had come to save? 

Thus, beyond the mere agony of hunger, there might 
well be this longing for support, this desire for assurance, 
this impulse to test what, in the human sphere — though 
He had laid aside His glory and taken upon Him the form 
of a servant — might be permitted to Him, in a manner 
which was in itself perfectly innocent. But whence did the 
suggestion come ? It came from something without Him, 
appealing to a bodily instinct. Quite clearly it was of the 
earth, and came from the Prince of the Power of the Air, 
suggesting to Him an inward doubt, or an open self- 
assertion. And what was hunger? Could not hunger be 
Borne, if God had sent it? If God desired to satiate 

* Mark i. 10 . f John vi. 30"35- 


94 


THE LIFE OF LIVES. 


hunger by a miracle it was a duty to await His good time, 
and not to use supernatural gifts for personal alleviation. 
In any case there is the higher as well as the lower life. 
The Tempter had indirectly suggested the thought of the 
manna; but in the wilderness God had suffered His people 
to hunger, expressly that He might try their faith and con- 
stancy before He supplied their needs by the manna which 
neither they nor their fathers had known. Jesus, therefore, 
repelled the temptation by the words which follow in the 
Book of Deuteronomy — that God had acted thus “that He 
might make thee know that man doth not live by bread 
only, but by every thing that proceedeth out of the mouth 
of the Lord doth man live.”* Thus to the Israelites the 
manna became “spiritual food.”f And had not Jeremiah 
also said, “ Thy words were found, and I did eat them, and 
Thy word was unto me the joy and rejoicing of mine 
heart; for I am called by Thy name, O Lord God of 
Hosts.” \ Our Lord would neither sate His hunger, nor 
challenge His Almighty Father by putting His own mirac- 
ulous powers to the test. 

Thus, by “ the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of 
God,” the first temptation was victoriously encountered, and 
plainly shown to be a temptation through all its subtle 
speciousness. 

(ii.) But the Tempter was not yet foiled. His next 
temptation should be separate from anything which could 
seem even remotely to have in it any admixture of selfish- 
ness or of personal desires. It should be a purely imagina- 
tive temptation, appealing solely to the deep thoughts 
about His Messianic work, which had been occupying the 

*Deut. viii. 3. The idea that the observance of God’s commandments 
tends to life runs through Deuteronomy (iv. 1, 2, 40, v. 29-33, etc.). See 
Wright, Some Problems of the New Testament , p. 10. All three of our Lord’s 
answers to Satan were taken from Deut. vi. and viii. Two of them were texts, 
enclosed in the apertures of the phylacteries \Tephillin). 

f 1 Cor. x. 4. 

X Jer. xv. 16. Comp. Ps. cxix. 103. 


THE TEMPTATION. 


i95 


mind of Jesus during His forty days in the wilderness, and 
only suggesting that He should put to the test the miracu- 
lous endowments which seemed indispensable to the fulfil- 
ment of the mighty issues before Him. Appealing this 
time to the pride of life, the Tempter suggests, “Thou 
hast been proclaimed to be the Son of God, and if Thou 
art the Son of God, no harm can happen to Thee. See ! 
Thou art on the pinnacle of the Temple;* cast Thyself 
down. Thy safety will be a glorious, a decisive proof of 
Thy Divine origin. Even of God’s ordinary human saints 
it is written — 

“ * There shall no harm happen unto thee, 

For He shall give His angels charge concerning thee 
To keep thee in all thy ways ; 

And on their hands they shall bear thee up, 

Lest haply thou dash thy foot against a stone.’ ” f 

Thus did the Devil cite Scripture for his purpose, and 
clothe his temptation in the most seeming-innocent guise. 
But he omitted from his quotations the words “ to keep 
thee in all thy ways” because those words implied that 
God’s promise did not extend to “ the precipice in the 
Temple, the regions of mid-air, or any devious paths of 
mere presumption, but only to the ways of obvious duty.”:): 

If, as many have supposed — though in the brief narrative 
of this spiritual struggle in the two Evangelists no hint of 
the kind is distantly suggested — if the temptation was 
really one to descend miraculously among the people 
assembled in the court below ; to flash upon them as it 
were at once in one sudden supernatural Epiphany of 
divine power — it might seem to acquire additional force. 

* Perhaps on the roof of the Stoa Basilikh , or Royal Porch, on the southern 
side of the Temple, which looked down 400 cubits into the wady of the Kidron 
(Jos. Antt. xv. n,5); or the Stoa Anatoli (Solomon’s Porch), from which the 
Lord's brother, St. James, was afterwards flung. Hegesippus ap. Euseb. H. E . 
ii. 23. 

f Ps. xci. I, II. 


\ See Mill, Five Sermons on the Temptation , p. 116; 


THE LIFE OF LIVES. 


196 

What a splendid manifestation would this be? How 
irresistibly would He thus inaugurate the work which His 
Father had given Him to do! 

But again Jesus saw into the hidden heart of the tempta- 
tion. It was an allurement to self-will, to self-assertion, to 
the independent challenge and use of heavenly powers. 
He repels the allurement by refuting the misapplication of 
Satan’s Scriptural quotation. The promise which the Evil 
One had quoted was a promise that God would keep His 
children amid the inevitable , unsought dangers of life. 
Scripture is not to be identified — as it constantly is — with 
any perversion, to alien ends, of its mere words : Scripture 
is solely what Scripture means . The Devil can quote 
Scripture for his purpose, but it is always a perversion of 
Scripture. The Psalmist had never meant to encourage 
the audacious demand for God’s supernatural interferences 
to enable us to escape from self-created perils. Jesus 
would not be guilty of forcing or of challenging God’s 
purposes. His reliance on His Heavenly Father should be 
one of absolute dependence. He knew that He would 
never be left alone while He did always the things which 
were pleasing in God’s sight.* So He met Satan’s false 
references to Scripture by another quotation which was of 
eternal validity. “ It stands written again,” He said, 
“ Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God.” f This second 
answer, like the first, involved the repudiation of all self- 
will ; the determination to follow only the Divine order, 
not any promptings, whether subjective or objective, which 
did not come from the Father of Lights. “ Trust in God 
must be accompanied by humble submission to His will, 
and is incompatible with the attempt to bring the power 
of God into the service of one’s own caprice.” $ 

* John viii. 29. 

f Matt. iv. 7 (Deut. vi. 16), yeypanrai, “ it hath been written,” “ it standeth 
written ; ovk kitTretpaoeic “ thou shalt not tempt to the full the Lord thy God,” 
i. e., thou shalt not challenge the full expression of His power. 

x Wendt. 


THE TEMPTATION. 


197 


(iii.) The form in which the third Temptation is narrated 
illustrates most decisively that our Lord, in revealing the 
story of His temptations in the wilderness, threw them into 
such a form as would bring them most vividly before the 
minds of His Apostles. The form of the story — that 
Satan set Jesus on an exceeding high mountain, and 
showed him, in a moment of time, all the kingdoms of the 
world and the glory of them — is doubtless an anthro- 
pomorphic picture which summarises the result of a mental 
conflict. The offer to give all these to Jesus on the condi- 
tion “ that He would fall down and do reverence before 
him ,” is obviously one which, in this form, would have been 
too coarsely and audaciously crude to have been a possible 
temptation to the Son of God.* But not so the underly- 
ing significance of the picture. Our Lord had been pro- 
claimed to be the Messiah, and He was aware of the nature 
of the Messianic hopes shared by the whole of His nation. 
But how could He carryout such hopes? how could He 
come up to the ideal of One whom John had painted as a 
Ruler, thoroughly purging His floor with mighty winnow- 
ing-fan, and gathering the wheat into His garner, but 
burning up the chaff with unquenchable fire? Surely the 
fulfilment of such magnificent anticipations would be 
impossible so long as He did not rise above the humble 
worldly position of a peasant and a Nazarene ? Conscious 
of His Divine nature, and His as yet unexercised powers — 
anxious, as a man among men, to inaugurate the King- 
dom — He must have felt how easy it would be to kindle 
His countrymen into a flame of zeal in comparison with 
which the enthusiasm aroused by Judas of Galilee would 
have been as nothing; — into zeal which would have gathered 
them as one man under one banner, and not only have 
broken in sunder the galling yoke of Roman dominion, but 


* The rendering, “ fall down and worship me,” is rather too strong ; it is, 
rather, “ do me homage as to a king, the Koofiotcparup." Eph. vi. 12. 


THE LIFE OF LIVES. 


198 

have carried Him forward to a world-wide dominion of 
glory and righteousness. 

The “ desire of the eyes ” could have had no share in 
this temptation, for to Him the riches of the world and the 
glory of them must have seemed no better than dross in 
comparison with the things unseen and eternal. It is only 
in a secondary and spiritual sense that what St. John calls 
“the braggart vaunt of life,” its vain pomp and splendour,, 
could have had the smallest allurement for One who lived 
in His Father’s presence. But the temptation may have 
come as a suggestion of the readiest and most triumphant 
means by which He could subdue the world, and make its 
kingdoms the kingdoms of God, at no other cost than that 
of concession to earthly prejudices. The temptation was 
most ingeniously veiled, as though it involved nothing more 
than a politic accommodation to outward conditions — the 
condescension of employing human means for high ends. 
But this temptation also — this half-hidden offer of the 
HOGfAOKpaTop* “the ruler of this world” — to promote 
establishment of a Messianic empire — was decisively 
rejected. “ The god of this world ” could not blind the 
eyes of a Wisdom which came from heaven, nor could his 
fiery darts remain unquenched on the shield of perfect 
faith. Decisive and energetic was the rejection of this last 
assault : “ Get thee hence, Satan ! for it standeth written* 

Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and Him only shalt 
thou serve.” 

After so absolute a defeat, the Devil might well leave 
Him “ until a season,” i. e., till he could see some new oppor- 
tunity for assault ;f and angels came and were ministering 
unto Him. He left the wilderness with mind determined, 


* John xiii. 31, xiv. 30, xvi. 11. The Jews spoke of Satan as Sar ha-Olam. 
But his power was not, as he said, “ delivered unto him,” except by the 
apostasy of men, for “the earth is the Lord's , and the fulness thereof’* 
(Ps. xxiv. 1). 

f Luke iv. 13, aneoTrj air’ airrov axpi naipov. 


THE TEMPTATION. 


*99 


with will resolutely fixed, to walk only in God’s way — in the 
path which, step by step, the Heavenly Father should make 
clear to Him, whithersoever it might lead. The principle 
which would henceforth sustain His whole life should be to 
shrink from no self-sacrifice, however awful ; to drink the 
cup, however bitter, which God should send to Him; and 
to annihilate every prompting which should have its source 
only in the earthly self. 

Finally victorious over all the assaults and blandish- 
ments of “ the prince of the power of the air,” Jesus felt the 
clear conviction that the path of His Messianic deliverance 
of Israel and of the world did not lie over the radiant moun- 
tain-heights of human glory, but through the deep Valley of 
Humiliation; and that the one inflexible purpose of every 
act of His mortal life must be, in absolute self-abnegation 
“ to do the will of Him that sent Him, and to finish His 
work.” The whole narrative of the Temptation is a com- 
ment on our Lord’s saying, “ The prince of this world 
cometh, and hath nothing in me.” * 

* John xiv. 30. 


CHAPTER XVIII. 


SCENES OF CHRIST’S MINISTRY. 

“ In the former time He brought into contempt the land of Zebulun 
and the land of Naphtali, but in the latter time He hath made it glo- 
rious, by the way of the sea. . . Galilee of the nations. — Is. ix. i. 

“ Quare Vocatur Gennazar ? ob hortos principum ( < ganne sarirn ).” — 
Lightfoot, Cent . Chorogr. Ixxix. 

I PASS over the pathetically beautiful events which took 
place when, on the return of Jesus from the Desert of the 
Temptation, He once more visited the scenes where John, 
having left the Wilderness of Judaea, was now baptising. 
John was at Bethany,* beyond Jordan, near the well-known 
Peraean ford of Bethabara, within a day’s journey of Naza- 
reth. The second stage of His ministry had begun. The 
Baptist now knew full well that his mission was practically 
finished, and he was inspired to point out the Lamb of God 
to some of his own disciples, f openly avowing that He must 
increase, and he himself must decrease. I shall speak far- 
ther on of the earliest disciples to obey the call of Christ — 
Andrew, John, Simon, Philip, and Nathanael. With them 
He visited Cana and wrought His earliest miracle. At the 
first Passover of His ministry He cleansed the Temple, and 
had His nocturnal interview with Nicodemus, the teacher of 

*“ Bethany," the reading of A, B, C, etc., was conjecturally altered by 
Origen into Bethabara , because he only knew of the Bethany on the Mount of 
Olives. Bethabara means “ the House of the Passage,” and is within easy 
reach of Cana. Caspari identifies it with Tiellanije, north of the Sea of Gali- 
lee. Condor thinks it may be Makhadet Abarah, northeast of Beisah. 

f Is. liii. ; Acts viii. 32. There may also be a reference to the Paschal Lamb, 
as the Passover was near. The thought may have been brought home to him 
by the sight of the flocks of lambs being driven to Jerusalem as offerings at 
the coming Feast. 


200 


SCENES OF CHRIST’S MINISTRY. 201 


Israel. After this He continued for a time to work in Judaea, 
and permitted His disciples to baptise, though He himself 
baptised not. It was at this time that, in answer to the 
jealous complaints of John’s disciples, the great Forerunner 
bore emphatic witness to Him as to One who cometh from 
heaven, who spoke the words of God, and to whom the 
Spirit had been given without measure — nay more, as the 
Son, into whose hands the Father had given all things.* 
Soon after this, Herod consummated his crimes by throwing 
John into the prison at Machaerus. Jesus then retired from 
Judaea into Galilee, and it may have been on this journey — 
for the exact chronology of events must ever remain uncer- 
tain — that He spoke with the Samaritan woman by Jacob’s 
Well. To this first year of His ministry also belonged the 
healing of the son of the court officer (fiaGiXixoS) of 
Capernaum, and His rejection by the Nazarenes when He 
preached in their synagogue. 

That pre-eminently bright and fruitful period of His 
ministry which has been called “the Galilaean Spring” began 
with His retirement from Nazareth to Capernaum. No small 
portion of the Gospels is occupied by the narratives of the 
work and teaching in the Plain of Gennesareth, beside the 
Sea of Galilee. Remote and narrow in extent is this cor- 
ner of Galilee, from which issued forth to all the world the 
words of eternal life. Yet the scenery eminently suited the 
Divine teaching, which was addressed to the humble, but 
was intended to bring new life to all mankind. The words 
of Jesus had few or none of the thunderous elements which 
marked the preaching of the Baptist. They were spoken, 
not in the waste and howling wilderness, nor, like those of 
Moses, among the more awful aspects of nature, but amid 
the soft delightful fields which lie on the west of the Lake 
of Galilee. There is a quiet enchantment about the whole 
locality. I once rode into the plain from the top of Kur’n 
Hattin — the Mount of Beatitudes — down the Wady Ham- 
mam, or “Vale of Doves,” rich with its Eastern vegetation. 

*John iii. 22-36. 


202 


THE LIFE OF LIVES. 


The road descends to the lake through the wretched village 
of El Mejdel (Magdala),* where (a certain sign of squalor) the 
little children run about naked in the street. So desolate 
are the shores of the Sea of Galilee in these days, that, as I 
rode for hours through the tall flowering oleanders, laden 
with their pink blossoms, there was scarcely a sign of human 
life. The white-winged pelicans floated on the water, and 
the kingfishers perched on the reeds beside the lake, and the 
masses of green entangled foliage along the water-courses 
were alive with myriads of twittering birds ; but, with the 
exception of a little group of fishermen who were fishing 
•with a drag-net from the shore, and four splendidly mounted 
Bedouin Arabs, I saw no one during many hours ; nor did 
the whole surface of the lake for thirteen miles from north 
to south show one single sail of the smallest fishing-boat. 

The green plain itself — Gennesareth, “ that unparalleled 
garden of God ”f — is but three miles long, and a mile and 
a half broad. Yet it gave its name to the sea, of which the 
Talmud has this remarkable eulogy: “ Seven seas, spake 
the Lord God, have I created in the land of Canaan, but 
only one have I chosen for myself, the Sea of Gennezar.” 

It was “ surrounded by pleasant towns,” § and its famous 
hot springs attracted numerous visitors. 

In the days of Jesus Christ the little plain was densely 
populated, and was far more lovely than now it is in its 
prolific luxuriance, which perhaps gained it the name of 
the Garden of Princes. || Then as now the lake abounded 
in rare and delicious varieties of fish ; then as now the grass 
was enamelled with a profusion of the lilies of the field ; 

* In ancient days indigo grew there, and it was known as “ the town of 
dyers.” 

f Jos. B. J. iii. 3, 2, x. 8. 

\ Midrash Tillin iv. 1 (quoted by Sepp. ii. 170). 

§ Plin. H. N. v. 15. 

| The derivation of “ Gennesareth ” is uncertain. Some regard the name as 
a corruption of the old Hebrew name Chinnereth, “ a harp ” (Deut. iii. 17; 
Josh. xi. 2). 


SCENES OF CHRIST’S MINISTRY. 203 

then as now the barren basaltic hills of the Eastern shore 
flung the shadows of their abrupt precipices upon the waters, 
and the gusts which rushed down their narrow valleys often 
swept the little inland sea into sudden storm. But the con- 
temporary description given of it by the Jewish historian 
will show how widely its present desolation differs from the 
aspect which it presented to the eyes of the Saviour of the 
World. “ The waters,” he says,* “ are sweet, and very agree- 
able for drinking; they are finer than the thick waters of 
other fens. The lake is also pure, and on every side ends 
directly at the shores and at the sand ; it is also of a tem- 
perate nature when you draw it up, and of a more gentle 
nature than river or fountain water, and yet always cooler 
than one could expect. Now when this water is kept in the 
open air it is as cold as snow. There are several kinds of 
fish in it, different both to the taste and the sight from 
those elsewhere. . . . The country also that lies over 
against this lake hath the same name of Gennesareth. Its 
nature is wonderful as well as its beauty ; its soil is so fruit- 
ful that all sorts of trees can grow upon it . . . for the 
temper of the air is so well mixed that it agrees very well 
with the several sorts . . . walnuts in vast plenty . . . 
palm trees . . . fig-trees . . . olives. One may call this 
place the ambition of nature, where it forces those plants 
which are naturally enemies to one another to grow to- 
gether ; it is a happy contention of the Seasons, as if every 
one of them lay claim to this country.” f 

“ Oh, why,” asked a Rabbi, “ are the fruits of Jerusalem 
not so good as those of Galilee ? ” “ Because else,” is the 

answer, “we should live at Jerusalem for the sake of the 
fruits, and not for Divine service.” It was in these regions 

*Jos. B. J. iii. 10, 7, 8. See Stanley, Sinai and Palestine , pp. 425-47; 
Thomson, The Land and the Book , p. 402 ; Tristram, Land of Israel, p. 431; 
Bob Roy on the Jordan ; Conder, Tent Work in Palestine , ch. xix. ; Renan, 
Vie de Jisus, 144 ; Neubauer, Geogr. du Talmud, p. 48. 

f Whiston’s transl. (abbreviated). 


204 


THE LIFE OF LIVES. 


that the Prophet Hoshea “ poured forth his warm and deep- 
felt words in which the excitable temper of the Galileans 
especially found expression ” ; and the Song of Songs had 
been composed “ by a poet, into whose heart the cheerful 
vicinage had poured its sunniest beams, and whose eyes 
were open to note how the flowers gleam and the fig-tree puts 
forth its green figs, and the vine sprouts, and the bloom of 
the pomegranates unfolds itself.” And “ amid this luxuri- 
ance of nature there lived still a healthy people, whose con- 
science was not yet corrupted by Rabbinical sophistries, 
and where full-grown men were elevated far above their 
Jewish kinsfolk, sickening with fanaticism.” 

The commercial road which ran by the lake to Damascus 
made Gennesareth familiar to foreign merchants, and vari- 
ous Gentile elements were to be found among the popula- 
tion. Tiberias, the new and half-heathen capital of Herod, 
into which we are not told that our Lord so much as once 
entered, exhibited to the offended eyes of the Jews its 
Palace ornamented with Grecian sculptures. Jesus never 
seems to have visited Sepphoris or Taricheae or other popu- 
lous cities; but three village-towns ( KODfj.onoXeii ) of Gen- 
nesareth were specially familiar with the words and works 
of the Son of Man — Chorazin, Bethsaida, and Capernaum. 
These are mentioned by Christ Himself as the main 
scenes of His ministry in the towns of Galilee. 

“ Woe unto thee, Chorazin ! Woe unto thee, Bethsaida ! 
for if the mighty works had been done in Tyre and Sidon 
which have been done in you, they would have repented 
long ago in sackcloth and ashes. . . . 

“ And thou, Capernaum, shalt thou be exalted into 
heaven ? Thou shalt be brought down unto Hades ! for if 
the mighty works had been done in Sodom which were 
done in thee, it would have remained unto this day.” 

So fragmentary is our knowlege of the continuous work 
of Christ, that, though Chorazin is mentioned first among 
the towns which Jesus had thus signally endowed with the 


SCENES OF CHRIST’S MINISTRY. 205 

privilege of witnessing His miracles of mercy,* * * § it is not once 
again alluded to in the Gospels, nor do we know of a single 
miracle which was wrought in it. Though we learn from 
the Talmud that it was once famous for the fineness of its 
wheat, f it was deserted even in the fourth century after 
Christ, and it is only within the last few years that its site 
has been identified with Kherazeh4 a heap of indistin- 
guishable ruins not quite three miles from Tell Hum. Its 
unusually stately synagogue had five aisles, and a quadruple 
row of columns adorned with Corinthian capitals, and 
decorative details elaborately carved in hard, black basalt. 
Over the upheaped and weed-grown cUbris of its forgotten 
prosperity might well be written the inscription : 

“ Woe unto thee, Chorazin ! ” 

The site of Bethsaida is to this day uncertain, though it 
was the native place of Andrew, Peter, and Philip, and was 
the frequent scene of the Lord’s manifestations. It was 
near Capernaum and Chorazin, and its name (“ House of 
Fish ”) seems to indicate that it was on the shore of the 
lake. The scanty remains at Ain et Tabijah, “ the fountain 
of the fig-tree,” seem to meet the necessary requirements. 

The site of Capernaum is also still a matter of dispute, 
though more than any other town it became Christ’s “ own 
city,” § and was the scene of His constant “ signs.” It is 
not mentioned either in the Old Testament or the Apocry- 
pha, but in Christ’s day it was “ exalted to heaven ” by His 
presence and gracious words. Tell Hum seems to me to 
correspond most nearly with the indications of its locality 
furnished by the Gospels. Capernaum is a corruption of 
Kaphar Nahum, “ the village of Nahum,” and Tell Hum 

* Matt. xi. 21 ; Luke x. 13. 

f Bab. Menachothy f. 85, 1. 

tit was discovered in 1842 by the Rev. G. Williams; and by the Rev. W. 
Thomson, 1857. It was in ruins in the days of Eusebius (a. d. 330). See 
Neubauer, Geogr. du Taint. 220. 

§ Matt. ix. 1 ; Mark ii. 1. 


206 


THE LIFE OF LIVES. 


may mean “ the ruinous mound of (Na)hum.” It js near 
Chorazin. Among its ruins still stands the fragment of a 
synagogue, over the gate of which is carved the pot of manna, 
which may have turned the thoughts of the people to 
Moses’ gift of “ bread from heaven.” * This is, perhaps, the 
very synagogue which the town owed to the munificence of 
the friendly Roman centurion. f In this city Matthew was 
called from “ the place of toll,” and here Jesus had at least 
a temporary home,;); perhaps in a house which may have 
been partly occupied by Simon and Andrew. No town, so 
far as we are aware, witnessed anything like the same num- 
ber of miracles. Here great multitudes gathered to Him ;* 
here He healed the nobleman’s son, and the centurion’s ser- 
vant, and Simon’s mother-in-law, and the paralytic, and the 
unclean demoniac, and the woman with the issue of blood, 
and raised the daughter of Jairus, and showed many other 
unrecorded signs.§ Here He taught humility to the dis- 
puting disciples by the example of a little child.] Here, too, 
in the synagogue He delivered that memorable discourse 
about “ the Bread of Life,” and about “ eating His flesh and 
drinking His blood,” T which caused such deep-seated 
offence, but which He Himself explained to be a metaphor 
when He said, “ It is the Spirit that quickeneth ; the flesh 
profiteth nothing ; the words that I have spoken unto you are 
spirit and are life.”** If that explanation, given by Christ 
Himself, had been rightly considered and apprehended, we 
might have been saved from masses of superstition. “ The 
letter,” as St. Paul says, “ killeth ; it is only the Spirit that 
giveth life.” ff “Nothing can carry us beyond the limits 
of its own realms. The new life must come from that which 
belongs properly to the sphere in which it moves.” There 
is no room for a wooden literalism. “ Gratia Dei,” says St. 

* John vi. 22-71. f Luke vii. 1,8; Matt. viii. 8. % Mark ii. 1. 

§ John iv. 46 ; Mark i. 21, 29 ; Matt, viii., ix.; Luke iv. 23, etc. 

| Matt. xix. 13 ; Mark x. 13, 14 ; Luke xviii. 15-17. 

If John vi. 22-71. ** John vi. 63. • Jj- 2 Cor. iii. 6. 


SCENES OF CHRIST’S MINISTRY. 207 

Augustine, “ non consumitur morsibus .” There is no more 
excuse for giving a literal meaning to “ My flesh is meat 
indeed,” than for understanding literally the words, “ He 
that believeth on Me, out of his belly shall flow rivers of liv- 
ing water.”* 

It was first in the synagogues, and then in the market- 
places f of these cities, and in the highways and the hedges, 
that the Saviour of the World manifested forth His glory. 
Here “ Oriental misery in its most terrible shape became the 
dearest object of His care.” Here the lepers cried to Him 
amid the degradation of their hideous deformity, and the 
helpless crippled beggars — the blind, and the halt, and the 
maimed. Jesus had nothing but love and healing pity for 
wretches who lived on the scraps flung out of the rich man’s 
door, and for the wild, naked, howling demoniacs, and the 
miserable, degraded harlots, and those whom Priests and 
Pharisees spurned and loathed as the very outcasts of 
society. Nor did He in the least resemble the self-deceivers 
who 

“ Sigh for wretchedness, but shun the wretched, 

Nursing in some delicious solitude 

Their dainty loves and slothful sympathies.” 

He never withheld the fulness of His miraculous mercy from 
the sick and sorrowful, the weary and heavy laden. Yet He 
came not to these alone, but to all around them ; and as He 
regarded them with His kingly eye of love, He used the 
simplest incidents of their everyday lives to give point to 
His parables and vividness to His instruction of the poor. 
In the common illustrations which He employed, “ day 
labourers are hired in the market, and paid in the evening ; 
with plough reversed the labourer takes his homeward way ; 
even at a distance from the village the singing and dancing 
* John vii. 38. 

f Not “in the streets,” for the narrow, densely-crowded streets of Oriental 
towns would afford no place for sermons or for acts of healing. Hence the 
R. V., in Mark vi. 56, rightly corrects the “ streets” of the A. V. St. Luke 
uses “ streets ” in a general sense in xiii. 26. 


2o8 


THE LIFE OF LIVES. 


of the holiday-makers can be heard ; in the market-place 
the children wrangle in their sports ; until late at night the 
noise of revelry and knocking at closed doors continues. 
The drunken steward storms at, and beats, and otherwise 
misuses the men-servants and maid-servants. In short, from 
morning till night life is much occupied, and boisterous and 
gay, and the busy people find no time for meditating on the 
kingdom of God. The one has bought a piece of ground 
and must needs go and see it ; the other must prove the 
oxen that have been knocked down to him ; the third has 
other business — a feast, or a funeral, or a marriage.” “ They 
ate, they drank, they bought, they sold, they planted, they 
builded, they married and were given in marriage.” So does 
Jesus describe the restless, busy life of His native land. 

At first Jesus seems largely to have used the synagogues 
as the scenes of His teaching.* They were, during all His 
life, the normal resorts of His Sabbath worship, and He 
required no other adjuncts than the bare simplicity of the 
desk and platform for preaching, and the cupboard in which 
the Thorah was kept. But when even in the synagogues 
He began to be opposed, and worried by the petty legal- 
ities of the officials who were instigated to annoy Him by 
their local Scribes, and by Pharisaic spies sent from Jeru- 
salem to watch and harass His movements, then more and 
more He deserted the synagogues, and taught under the 
open air of heaven those outcasts of the world and of nom- 
inal Churches from whom He meant to gather the children 
of the Kingdom. 

It is a strange thought that there are but three or four 
actual spots where we may be certain that the feet of the 
Saviour of mankind have stood. One is in the rocky road 
full of sepulchral caves which mounts from the Plain of 
Esdraelon to Nein (the Nain of the Gospel) up the sides of 
Little Hermon (Jebel ed-Duhy), where He raised to life the 
widow’s son. Another is the rocky platform where the 

* Matt. iv. 23, ix. 35, x. 17, xii. 9, xiii. 54 ; Luke iv. 15, 20, 44, etc.; John 
xviii. 20. 


SCENES OF CHRIST’S MINISTRY. 209 

road from Bethany sweeps to the northward round the 
shoulder of the Mount of Olives, and Jerusalem first bursts 
on the view. The third is the summit of Kur’n Hattin, 
from which Safed, “ the city set on a hill,” stands full in 
view, where Jesus uttered “the Sermon on the Mount.” 

To these we may perhaps add the Har-ha-Beit } or “ Hill 
of the House,” on the broad platform of which once stood 
the Temple which was “ the joy of the whole earth ” ; and 
perhaps Gethsemane, of which the traditional site has much 
to be said in its favour. But we do not know with distant 
approach to certainty the sites even of the Crucifixion, or 
of the Holy Sepulchre. That the sites where events took 
place which have swayed the whole temporal and eternal 
destinies of the human race could have been forgotten 
might well seem passing strange ; but the earliest genera- 
tions of believers, in the days of primitive Christianity, 
attached no importance to localities or relics. The Lord 
Christ was to them far less the human Jesus, who, for one 
brief lifetime had moved among men, than He was the 
Risen, the Eternal, the Glorified Christ, their Lord and 
their God. They habitually contemplated Him, not as on 
the Cross, but as on the Throne ; not as the humiliated 
-sufferer, but as the King exalted far above all heavens. 
They never regarded Him as taken away from them, but 
on the contrary as nearer to them than He had been while 
on earth even to the Disciple whom He loved, and who 
bowed his head upon His breast. So far from being absent 
from them , He was, as He had expressly taught, ever with 
them and within them. To minds pervaded by such 
thoughts, the scenes of His earthly pilgrimage were com- 
paratively as nothing. Their thoughts were with Him in 
the “ far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory ” 
wherein, though He now lived amid “ the sevenfold chorus 
of Hallelujahs and harping symphonies,” He was yet no 
less in the midst of them, wheresoever two or three were 
gathered together in His name. 


CHAPTER XIX. 


CHRIST’S METHODS OF EVANGELISATION. 

Ilrw^oi evayysl'^ovrai. — MATT. xi. 5. 

B paxiiq &£ mi, awro/xol nap’ avrov "kSyoi yeydvaoiv. ov yap tiofyiorlg vnfjpxtv ' 
aXka Avvajug Qeov 6 "koyog avrov rjv . — JUSTIN MARTYR, Afiol. i. 14. 

The manner in which the Son of God preached the 
Gospel of His Kingdom was characterised by the perfect 
simplicity which marked His whole career. He came to 
give an example to all mankind of what might be the ordi- 
nary state of men, not exalted by any factitious rank, nor 
glorified by any external magnificence, nor rendered prom- 
inent by any adventitious circumstances, but elevated trans- 
cendency above the low malarious swamps of common 
humanity by the sinlessness of that spiritual life which 
He came not only to exemplify but to impart. The High 
Priest on the Day of Atonement went into the holy place 
in hierarchic pomp, in his golden garments, encircled with 
his girdle of blue and purple and scarlet, and the jewelled 
Urim on his breast ; the Essene affected white robes, and a 
predetermined look of sanctified asceticism ; the Pharisee, 
while he was devouring widows’ houses, and for a pretence 
making long prayers, chose the chief seats in feasts and 
synagogues, loved to walk in long robes, and to pose 
in saintly attitudes, delighted in ceremonious greetings, 
sounded a trumpet before him when he did his alms, made 
broad his phylacteries, enlarged the tassels of his garment, 
and did all his works to be seen of men. The Lord of Life 
went about in humble sincerity, wearing neither the mantle 
of the Prophet, nor the hairy garb and leathern girdle of 
the eremite, but making His appeal to the hearts of men 
by the sacred elements of the humanity which was the 


210 


CHRISTS METHODS. 


21 I 


common gift of God alike to the rich and to the poor, to- 
the great and to the lowly. 

“ In Himself was all His state, 

More solemn than the tedious pomp that waits 
On princes, when their rich retinue long 
Of horses led, and grooms besmeared with gold. 

Dazzles the crowd, and sets them all agape." 

His was that most simple and deep-reaching form of evan- 
gelisation which, in the persons of His holiest followers — a 
Paul, a Peter, a Francis of Assisi, a Francis Xavier, a Wes- 
ley, a Whitefield — has ever been ten-thousandfold more 
effective than the most elaborately gorgeous ceremonials 
of Popes and Priests. And though He wore the peasant 
garb, and associated constantly with the peasant multitude, 
and had not about Him a single attribute of earthly state, 
there was something so heart-searching in His very look 
that it troubled the world-entangled soul of the young 
ruler;* and broke the heart of Peter ;f and impressed the 
arrogant cynicism of the Roman Procurator ; % and again 
and again left an indelible impression on the minds of His 
disciples, § and even of the multitude. 

When He was at Jerusalem He taught sometimes in the 
Temple — but only in the open courts and porticoes, because 
they were the common places of resort where alone in the 
Holy City His voice could be heard by the multitudes who 
thronged thither to the feasts. But the rites and cere- 
monies of that desecrated Temple, infinitely elaborated as 
they were, received from Him no word of approval. The 
wild joy of the ceremony of drawing water in the Feast of 
Tabernacles only caused Him to exclaim, “ If any man 
thirst, let him come unto Me and drink ” ; || and when the 
people were exulting in the glory of the huge golden can- 
delabra and numberless lamps which shed their glow over 
the Treasury and the Temple Courts, He said, “ I am the 

* Mark x. 21, 22. f Luke xxii. 6i. % John xix. 5. 

§ Matt. xix. 26 ; Mark x. 27. 1 John vii. 37.. 


2 12 


THE LIFE OF LIVES. 


Light of the world : he that followeth Me shall not walk in 
the darkness, but shall have the light of life.” * 

These obvious, but unrecorded, indications that Christ’s 
teaching was suggested by immediate circumstances lead us 
to suppose that this was constantly the case. The Parable 
of the Pounds was suggested by the history of King Arche- 
laus, which was brought into our Lord’s mind by the sight 
of the palace which he had built at Jericho. The allusion 
to the wind which bloweth where it listeth, in the discourse 
with Nicodemus, would naturally arise from the soughing 
of the night wind outside the booth. The allegory of the 
Ideal Vine may have been suggested by the vineyards near 
the Kidron, or by the Golden Vine over the Temple door. 

There are some minds which seem to think that worship 
must be imperfect if it is not surrounded with splendour 
and symbolism. Thus a Roman Catholic author wrote : 
41 Oh ! then what delight! what joy unspeakable! The 
stoups are filled to the brim ; the lamp of the Sanctuary 
burns bright, and the albs hang in the oaken ambries, and 
the cope-chests are filled with osphreyed baudekins, and 
pyx, and pax, and chrismatory are there, and thurible 
and cross !”f Strange sources, indeed, to any manly and 
spiritual mind for such ecstatic rapture ! How many 
millions of true saints have enjoyed the utmost bliss of 
holy worship without any need of being excited or dis- 
tracted by “ pyx,” or “ pax,” or “ chrismatory,” or “ oaken 
ambries,” or even “ osphreyed baudekins ! ” Such things as 
the thurible and the crucifix were unknown to, and avoided 
by, primitive Christians in the centuries when Christianity 
was most effective and most pure. Artificial religious 
externalism receives no approval from the lips of Christ. 
Nothing which remotely resembles it is distantly alluded 
to, either by Him or His Apostles, as constituting a desir- 
able adjunct of holy worship. Even Levitism, destined to 
meet the requirements of a people whose hearts were gross, 

* John- viii. 12. f Recollections of A. Welby Pugin, p. 162. 


CHRISTS METHODS. 


213 


and their ears dull of hearing, offers no analogy to the 
spirituality, simplicity, and sincerity of worship which are 
the sole requirements for our approach to Him who is a 
Spirit, and who requires them that worship Him to worship 
Him in spirit and in truth. Alike by His precepts and by 
His practice, He who came from the bosom of the Father 
illustrates the truth that sincere devotion can make even 
the mud floor of the humblest cottage “ as sacred as the 
rocks of Sinai.” 

Hence Jesus taught sometimes in the house which at 
Capernaum served Him as a home; * * * § sometimes in Peter’s 
house, or the house of Martha and Mary at Bethany, f 
Sometimes — as in the house of Simon the Pharisee, and of 
other Pharisaic rulers — He made an ordinary meal the 
occasion of some of His deepest lessons, and borrowed His 
images from bread, and salt, and wine, and the washing of 
hands. \ He taught and healed in the market-places, and 
at city gates ; § and in the broader streets and roads. || 
Much of His most solemn instruction was given, especially 
to His Apostles, as He journeyed with them on the 
frequented highways, 1" or in lonely places to which He 
had retired,** or “ in the fields as they went from village to 
to village.” ft Some of His richest Parables were addressed 
to the multitudes who crowded the beach while the little 
boat, which was always at His disposal, rocked gently on 
the bright ripples of the lake He loved. # Sometimes He 
spoke to throngs composed of poor pilgrims from every 

*Mark ii. I, iii. 20, where etc oIkov ( or ev ohci j) means that the house was His 
house. 

f Matt. viii. 14 ; Luke x. 38. 

X John vi. ; Matt. v. 13, ix. 17 ; Luke v. 37 ; Matt. xv. 2 ; Mark vii. 2. 

§ Mark vi. 56. 

I Matt. vi. 2 ; Luke x. 10, xiii. 26. 

Matt. xvi. 13. 

** Matt. xiv. 13 ; Luke ix. 10, xi. 1 ; Mark vi. 34, 35. 

ft Matt. ix. 35, xiv. 15 ; Mark vi. 56 ; Luke xii. 22, etc. 

X\ Matt. xiii. 1, 2 ; Mark ii. 13; Luke v. 1-3. 


214 


THE LIFE OF LIVES. 


nation, as they sat round Him on the hilltop ; and some- 
times on the broad and lonely plains whither great multi- 
tudes flocked to Him on foot from all the cities.* He 
loved to speak in the open air under God’s blue heaven,, 
and among the lilies of the field. Teaching, with His feet 
among the mountain flowers, He could point to the golden 
amaryllis, or the scarlet anemones, or the gorgeous tulips, 
and tell His hearers to trust in God’s free bounty, since not 
even “Solomon in all his glory” was arrayed like one of 
these, which were but the perishing “grass of the field.” 
Teaching with the soft wind of heaven upon His brow, He 
could point the lessons to be learnt from the ravens and the 
sparrows and the bright or lowering sky. But, for the 
greater part of His life, the simple worship of the syna- 
gogues sufficed Him. “As His custom was He went into 
the synagogue on the Sabbath day, and stood up for to 
read ” ; and “ He taught in their synagogues, being 
glorified of all.” T 

But it did not seem to make the least difference to the 
depth and power of His teaching whether He was speaking 
to the ears of a single auditor, like Nicodemus, the timid 
Chakam who came to Him by night, or the Samaritan 
woman by the noonday well, or the blind man whom He 
had healed ; or whether He was in the midst of “ myriads, 
who “pressed, and crushed Him,”§ and “ trode on one 
another” in their eagerness to hear the gracious words 
which proceeded from His lips. 


* Matt. v. i, xv. 29, xvii. I. 
X Luke xii. * 


f Luke iv. 15, 16, etc. 
§ Luke viii. 45. 


CHAPTER XX. 


THE FORM OF CHRIST’S TEACHING. 

IT oTiv/itpciq kcu TroTivrpdKug. — HEB. i. i. 

The form of Christ’s teaching was as varied and as simple 
as were its methods. It was the spontaneous outcome of 
the requirements of the moment. Whatever was most 
exactly needed for the defence of a truth, or the blighting 
of a hypocrisy, or the startling of self-satisfaction into peni- 
tence, or the consolation of despondency, was instantane- 
ously clothed in its best form, whether of reproach, or 
question, or deep irony, or tender apostrophe, or exquisitely 
poetic image. It was a TIo\v7t6iKi\oi Gocpia, “a richly 
variegated wisdom,” which, like the King’s daughter, was 
“ circumamicta varietatibus — clothed in raiment of various 
colours.”* His lessons were not, it would seem, often 
expressed in long and didactic addresses, to which the Ser- 
mon on the Mount offers the nearest approach. There was 
in them nothing of recondite metaphysics. “ What Jesus 
had to offer,” it has been said, “was not a new code with its 
penal enactments, not a new system of doctrine with its 
curse upon all who should dare to depart from it, but a sure 
promise of deliverance from misery, of consolation under 
all suffering, and perfect satisfaction for all the wants of the 
soul.” And this was set forth, not in gorgeous metaphor, 
or sonorous rhetoric, but in language of the most perfect 
simplicity, unencumbered by the pedantry of scholasticism, 
or the minutiae of logic. There ran throughout His dis- 
courses “ the two weighty qualities of impressive pregnancy 
and popular intelligibility.” And to make what He said 

* Eph. iii. io ; Ps. xlv. 13. 


215 


2 I 6 


THE LIFE OF LIVES. 


more clear in its brevity, His words were illuminated with 
constant illustrations, not drawn from remote truths of 
science, but suggested by the commonest sights, sounds, 
and scenes of nature, and the most familiar incidents of 
humble life — the rejoicing shepherd carrying back on his 
shoulders the recovered lamb ; the toiling vine-dressers ; 
the harvesters in the fields of ripe corn ; the children busy 
in gathering the tares for burning ; the woman seeking for 
the lost coin out of her forehead-circlet ; the man going to 
borrow from his neighbour a loaf for his hungry and 
unexpected guest. He taught by picturesque and concrete 
examples,* or when He laid down general rules applied 
them to actual cases. Instead of speaking in the abstract 
of the beauty of Humility, He took a little child and set 
him in the midst, and bade the disciples receive the King- 
dom of Heaven as that little child. f Instead of warning 
them that they were liable to constant temptation, He says, 
“ Behold, Satan has desired to have you, that he may sift 
you as wheat.” f Instead of saying, “You must not be 
content to keep your convictions for your private guidance,” 
He says, “ Is the lamp brought to be put under the bushel 
or under the bed, and not to be put on the stand ?” J By 
multitudes of such pictures He caused a spontaneous 
recognition of the truth which to every enlightened* con- 
science would itself be as an authoritative command. 

“A theoretical philosophy strictly so called,” says Schii- 
rer, “was a thing entirely foreign to genuine Judaism. 
Whatever it did happen to produce in the way of philoso- 
phy ( Chokmah , ‘ wisdom ’) either had practical religious 
problems as its theme (as in Job and Ecclesiastes), or was 
of a directly practical nature — being directions based upon 
a thoughtful study of human things in order so to regulate 
our life as to ensure our being truly happy. The form in 

* Matt. vi. 19, 25, vii. 6, x. 35, xi. 8, xviii. 6, xix. 12 ; Luke vi. 34, and 
passim. 

f Luke xxii. 31. % Matt. v. 15. 


FORM OF CHRIST’S TEACHING. 217 

which these contemplations and instructions were presented 
was that of the ‘ proverb * or aphorism ( Mashai ), which con- 
tained a single thought expressed in concise and compre- 
hensive terms, in a form more or less poetical, and in which 
there was nothing of the nature of discussion or argument.”* 
Jewish literature possessed a collection of such aphorisms 
in the Proverbs of Solomon, and the Wisdom of Jesus the 
Son of Sirach; and later we find them in the Talmudic 
book, Pirqe Avdth , or “Sayings of the Fathers.” Our Lord 
frequently adopted this gnomic mode of instruction in 
concise sayings, of which these are but a few specimens ; 
although, as a glance suffices to prove, He infuses into them 
a depth of spiritual meaning which finds no parallel in any 
other form of proverbial instruction. 

“ A city set on a hill cannot be hid.” t 

“ Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees.” f 

“ God is not the God of the dead, but of the living.” § 

“ Leave the dead to bury their own dead.” || 

“ If the light in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness.” IT 
“ Salt is good ; but if the salt have lost its saltness, wherewith will ye 
season it ?” ** 

“ Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles ?” ft 
“ If the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into a pit.” ft 
“ It is not meet to take the children’s bread, and cast it to the 
dogs.” §§ 

“ He that walketh in darkness knoweth not whither he goeth.” |||| 

“ They that are whole have no need of a physician, but they that are 
sick.” ITU 

“ Be ye wise as serpents, but harmless as doves.” *** 

If these be compared with the sayings of Heraclitus (for 
instance) among the Greeks, or of Hillel, who furnishes the 
best specimens which we can find in the Talmud, their 
immense superiority will at once- be recognised. There is 

* Hist, of the Jewish People , div. ii. vol. iii. 24, E. T. 
f Matt. v. 14. % Matt. xvi - 6 - § Matt. xx “‘ 32> 

|| Luke ix. 60. * IT Matt. vi. 23. ** Mark ix. 50. 

ff Matt, vii 19. XX Matt. xv - * 4 - §§ Mark vii - 2 7 - 

HI John xii. 35. IT IF Mark ii. 17. *"** Matt. x. 16. 


2 I 8 


THE LIFE OF LIVES. 


nothing strained or obscure about them ; they are intensely 
concrete and picturesque. Their marvellous concentration 
excludes every superfluous word, yet admits no lurking fal- 
lacy. They have the illuminating force of the lightning ; 
they compress words of wisdom into a single line. A child 
may understand them, but the wisest philosopher cannot 
exhaust their infinite significance. 

Our Lord taught, it has been truly said, in ideas , not in 
limitations; and the essence of faith is “a permanent confi- 
dence in the idea — a confidence never to be broken down 
by apparent failures, or by examples by which ordinary 
people prove that qualification is necessary. It was pre- 
cisely because Jesus taught the idea, and nothing below it, 
that the effect produced by Him could not have been pro- 
duced by anybody nearer to ordinary humanity.” 

Again, in order to arrest the attention and stimulate the 
jaded and conventional moral sense of His hearers, our 
Lord often adopted the form of paradox to state “ excep- 
tionless principles ,” such as could only be perverted by a 
stupid literalism. Exceptions which are inevitable, and are 
a matter of course, may easily be omitted.* In fact, some 
of Christ’s vivid questions and concentrated appeals are 
thrown into the form which was known to the Greeks as 
oxymoron — which is defined as a saying which is the more 
forcible from its apparent extravagance, f 

Take, for instance, such a rule as : 

“ When thou makest a dinner or a supper, call not thy friends, nor 
thy brethren, nor thy kinsfolk, nor rich neighbours ; lest haply they also 
bid thee again, and a recompense be made thee. But when thou makest 
a feast, bid the poor, the maimed, the lame, the blind. . ,”J 

No one of the most ordinary intelligence would fail to see 

* See Matt. vii. I, xx. 16, xxv. 29 ; Mark ii. 17 ; John v. 31 (comp. viii. 
14). ix. 39, etc. 

t See Matt. v. 39, ix. 13 ; Luke xiv. 26 ; John vi. 27, etc.; Glass, Philology 
Sacr. p. 468. 

\ Luke xiv. 12-14. 


FORM OF CHRIST’S TEACHING. 219 

that the rule is not intended for literal application, but that 
it was meant to point out that there is no merit in hospital- 
ity which is only directed by the “ slightly expanded egot- 
ism ” of family selfishness, or only intended to bring about 
a return in kind ; but that the highest and most genuine 
hospitality is disinterested, loving, and compassionate. It 
must also be borne in mind that our Lord naturally spoke 
in the idioms of His country, and that in Hebrew “not" 
often means “not only — but also,” or “not so much — as.”* 
In other words, “not" is often used to deny, not abso- 
lutely, but conditionally and comparatively, f 

Again, when He said, “Whosoever smiteth thee on thy 
right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if any man 
would go to law with thee, and take away thy coat, let him 
have thy cloak also,” He merely meant to present the essen- 
tial ideas of forbearance and forgiveness “ with the great- 
est clearness and in the briefest compass.” He showed by 
His own example — as indeed His hearers would have easily 
understood — that He did not mean such paradoxes to be 
taken in the letter; for when He was Himself smitten on 
the cheek by the servant of the High Priest He did not 
turn the other cheek, but addressed to the insolent offender 
a dignified rebuke in the words, “ If I have spoken evil, bear 
witness of the evil ; but if well, why smitest thou Me ? ” 

So, too, when He said, “ If any man cometh unto Me, 
and hateth not his own father and mother, and wife, and 
children, and brethren and sisters, yea and his own life also, 
he cannot be My disciple,”:): He was speaking to those who 
were perfectly familiar with Jewish idioms, which put truth 
in its extremest form, and — as a figure of speech — empha- 
sised a precept by the exclusion of all exceptions. § 

* See Prov. viii. io ; John vi. 27 ; 1 Cor. i. 17, xv. 10 ; 1 Tim. ii. 9, etc. 

\ See Jer. viii. 22 ; Joel ii. 13 ; Matt. ix. 13 ; Gal. v. 21 ; Heb. vii. 11. 

\ Wendt (ii. 67) compares the saying of Luther “ Nehmen sie den Leib, 
Gut, Ehr, Kind, und Weib. Lass fahren dahin ! ” 

§ Luke xiv. 26. We see from Matt. x. 37, that “hate” merely means in 
comparison with the deeper, diviner love. 


220 


THE LIFE OF LIVES. 


This fact is illustrated by the way in which St. Matthew 
records the saying ; — which is “ He that loveth father or 
mother more than Me is not worthy of Me : and he that 
loveth son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me.”* 
Thus, in our Lord’s favourite quotation from the Prophet 
Hoshea, “ I desire mercy and not sacrifice,” neither the 
ancient Prophet nor our Lord meant to abrogate the whole 
Levitic law of sacrifice, but only to express the transcen- 
dence of the duty of mercy. 

In teaching which was pre-eminently intended to arrest 
the attention and to linger in the memory, the form of ex- 
pression is of the utmost importance.f Our Lord’s dis- 
courses were often delivered in the current Aramaic, and if 
we possessed them in their original form it is more than 
possible that we should find that they abounded in those 
assonances and forcible plays on words which often have a 
hidden power of their own. Thus, the words (Matt. xi. 17),. 

“ We piped unto you and ye did not dance, 

We wailed, and ye did not beat the breast,” 

in addition to their rhythmic and antithetic parallelism 
would have been still more forcible if the words used for 
“danced ” and “mourned” were rakedtoon and arkedtoon . 
The phrase “the gates of Hades” (Matt. xvii. 18) may 
have acquired impressiveness from the alliteration, Shaare 
Sheol. X Again, what a new light falls on the familiar words, 
“ Come unto Me all ye who are weary and heavy laden, and 
I will give you rest. For I am meek and lowly in heart, 
and ye shall find rest unto your souls,” when we know the 
assonances between “ I will give you rest ” ( anikhkhon )„ 
“ meek ” ( nikh ) and “ rest ” (Nikha). 

* Matt. x. 37. 

t Thomas Boys (on I Pet. iii.) says : “ The intention of these apparent in- 

consistencies is that we may mark them, dwell upon them, get instruction out 
of them. Things are put to us in a strange way, because if they were put in a 
more ordinary way we should not notice them.” 

t On this subject, see Heinsius, Aristarchus ; and Glass, Phil. Sacra, p. 958. 


FORM OF CHRIST’S TEACHING. 221 


In Matt. iii. 9, St. John the Baptist plays on the asso- 
nance between Abanim (“ stones ”) and Banim (“ sons ”). In 
Matt. x. 30, we read, “ The very hairs of your head are all 
numbered." This is a paronomasia between Mene (“ hairs ”) 
and mamyan (“ numbered’'). In Luke vii.41, 42, the words 
chav (“ owe ”) and achab (“ one another ”) resemble each 
other. In John i. 5, the Syriac would be, “ The light shin- 
eth in darkness ( Gebal ), and the darkness comprehended 
(gibbal) it not.”* 

It has not perhaps been sufficiently noticed that our 
Lord sometimes adopted for His teaching the form of 
spontaneous poetry — engraving the words on the memory 
of His hearers by adopting the rhythmic parallelism of 
Hebrew verse, characterised by that climax and refrain in 
which Eastern poetry delights. The parallelism which is 
the distinctive characteristic of Hebrew poetry falls under 
three main heads — antithetic, synthetic, and synonymous. 
We find all three forms utilised in Christ’s teaching. We 
have antithetic paralellism in such sayings as 

“ Every one that exalteth himself shall be humbled. 

And he that humbleth himself shall be exalted.” f 

We have synthetic , or progressive parallelism in 

“ He that receiveth you receiveth Me, 

And he that recevieth Me, receiveth Him that sent Me.”J 

Synonymous, or illustrative parallelism is found in such say- 
ings as 

“ They that are whole have no need of a physician, 

But they that are sick.” 

“ I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.” § 

The following is a specimen of synthetic parallelism in 
which the second line not only emphasises but advances 

* Adduced by Dr. Bullinger, Figures of Scripture , p. 322. 

f Luke xiv. n. \ Matt. x. 40. § Mark ii. 17. 


222 


THE LIFE OF LIVES. 


the sense of the first ; and to which in the last two lines is 
added a specimen of antithetic parallelism : 

“ Think not that I came to send peace on earth : 

I came not to send peace, but a sword. 

For I came to set a man at variance against his father, 

And the daughter against her mother, 

And the daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. 

And a man’s foe shall be they of his own household." 

44 He that findeth his life shall lose it ; 

And he that loseth his life for My sake shall find it."* 

Again 

“ Every sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven unto men, 

But the blasphemy against the Holy Spirit shall not be forgiven. 

And whosoever shall speak a word against the Son of Man, it shall be 
forgiven him ; 

But whosoever shall speak against the Holy Spirit, it shall not be 
forgiven him. 

Neither in this aeon, nor in the coming one." 

Here two antithetic parallelisms are followed by a strong 
synthetic conclusion, f Again, in Matt. xxv. 34-46 there 
is a lovely and powerful rhythmic passage in which “ each 
division consists of a triplet or stanza of three lines, fol- 
lowed by a stanza of six lines, which, in the form of a 
climax, state the reason of the sentence ; then the response 
of those that receive the sentence, then the reply of the 
Judge; lastly, the concluding couplet describes the passage 
to their doom of the just and of the unjust.” ^ 

This poetic structure is often traceable in the Sermon on 
the Mount, as in the lines of synthetic and introverted 
parallelism in which the first corresponds to the fourth, 
and the second to the third. 

44 Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, 

Neither cast ye your pearls before swine, 

* Matt. x. 34-39, xvi. 25 ; Mark viii. 35 ; Luke ix. 24. See, too, Matt. vi. 
19, 20. 

f Matt. xii. 31, 32. \ Carr St. Matthew , p. 280. 


FORM OF CHRIST’S TEACHING. 


223 


Lest haply they trample them under their feet 
And turn again and rend you.” * 

And in the next two verses there are “ triplets with an 
ascending climax." f 

u Ask, and it shall be given you ; 

Seek, and ye shall find ; 

Knock, and it shall be opened unto you 
For every one that asketh receiveth, 

And he that seeketh findeth, 

And to him that knocketh it shall be opened.” 

And, not to multiply examples, there is a peculiarly lovely 
and finished specimen of synthetic and antithetic parallel- 
ism in the address of our Lord to Simon the Pharisee. \ 

“ Simon, dost thou mark this woman ? 

I entered into thine house, 

Thou gavest me no water for my feet ; 

But she hath wetted my feet with her tears 
And wiped them with her hair. 

Thou gavest me no kiss ; 

But she, since the time I came in, 

Hath not ceased to kiss my feet. 

My head with oil thou didst not anoint ; 

But she hath anointed my feet with spikenard. 

Her sins, which are many, are forgiven, 

For she loved much ; 

But to whom little is forgiven, 

The same loveth little.” 

* Matt. vii. 6. For another instance of introverted parallelism see Matt. vi. 
24. 

\ Id. 7, 8. Similiar triplets of synthetic parallelism are found in John x. 
27, 28. 

X Luke vii. 44-47* 


CHAPTER XXI. 

THE FORM OF CHRIST’S TEACHING ( Continued ). 

THE PARABLES. 

“ A parable of knowledge is in the treasures of wisdom." — Ecclus. i. 25. 

“Apples of gold in baskets of silver." — Prov. xxv. 11. 

“ Though truths in manhood darkly join, 

Deep-seated in our mystic frame, 

We yield all blessing to the Name 
Of Him who made them current coin." 

—Tennyson. 

The teachings of our Lord, especially after the earliest 
phase of His Ministry, was more habitually and essentially 
pictorial and illustrative than that of any other teacher of 
mankind. The word “ parable ” — derived from rtapafiaW- 
eiv, “ to place side by side,” and so “ to compare ” — is 
used in the Gospels with a wider latitude than we ordi- 
narily give to it. The parable differs from (i.) a fable 
because it only moves within the limits of possibility ; 
from (ii.) an allegory in not being throughout identical 
with the truth illustrated ; from (iii.) a simile, in its more 
complete and dramatic development. There is no direct 
parable in the Gospel of St. John, but there are many 
“ symbolic comparisons,” of which the majority are drawn 
from Nature — such as that of the wind blowing where it 
listeth (iii. 8) ; the growth of the grain of wheat (xii. 24); 
sowing and reaping (iv. 35-38) ; and there are two alle- 
gories, those of the Fair Shepherd, and the Vine and its 
branches. St. John does not use the word 7tapafio\rj 
once, but he uses the word napoipia (“ proverb ”) four 


224 


FORM OF CHRIST’S TEACHING. 225 

times (x. 6, xvi. 25, 29). Elsewhere this word only occurs 
in 2 Peter ii. 22.* * * § 

The name, “ parable,” is given, not only to continuous 
narratives, but to condensed maxims such as : 

“ If the blind lead the blind, shall they not both fall into the ditch ? ” f 

“ Physician, heal thyself.” \ 

“ The whole have no need of the physician, but the sick.” § 

“ No man rendeth a piece from a new garment and putteth it on an 
■old garment, or putteth new wine into old wine-skins.” |j 

“ Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles ?” IT 

In point of fact, the words “ parable ” and “ proverb ” 
are used to some extent interchangeably, and both words 
are, in the Septuagint, chosen to translate the Hebrew 
Mashal. ** In this sense of the word even the Sermon on 
the Mount abounds in parables, for it contains fully four- 
teen comparisons, any one of which might have been 
expanded into a little narrative. 

In ordinary English, however, the word “ parable ” is 
used to describe the illustrations which, whether derived 
from nature or from human life, are used as pictorial figures 
of spiritual and moral truths. These have been divided 
into symbolic (which are the more numerous) and typical.\^ 
.Symbolic parables are those which, like the Parables of the 
Sower, the Mustard Seed, or the Fisher’s Net, are descrip- 

* The Book of Proverbs is called II apoi/iicu in the LXX., but in i Kings iv. 32 
we read, eXa?^ae rpiayOdaq n apafioMq. 

f Luke v. 36. Our Lord very rarely used irony , as in Mark vii. 9. 

\ Luke vi. 39. 

§ Mark ii. 17. 

| Luke iv. 23. This proverb is found in the Talmud, in e. g. Tanchuma f. 4, 2. 

Matt. vii. 16, 2-4, xxiii. 24, xxiv. 28. For many others see Mark ii. 21; 
iii. 27, iv. 21, vii. 27, x. 25 ; Luke xvi. 13, xvii. 31, xxiii. 31 ; Matt. xvii. 25; 
John iv. 37, etc. Many of these are found in the Talmud ; Sanhedrin , f. 100, 
I ; Baba Bathra, f. 15, 2, etc. 

** Ps. xlix. 4 ; lxxviii. 2 ; 1 Sam. x. 19, xxiv. 14. Comp. Num. xxiii. 7 ; 
Prov. i. 6 ; Ezek. xii. 22, etc. 

\\ Goebel, The Parables of Jesus , p. 4. 


226 


THE LIFE OF LIVES. 


tive pictures set forth in a narrative form ; typical parables- 
are those like the Parables of the Good Samaritan, or Dives 
and Lazarus, which convey instruction and warning by the 
incidents or histories of human life. The Old Testament 
supplies us with one example of each kind.* Nathan’s; 
Parable of the Ewe Lamb is typical ; f Isaiah’s Parable of 
the Vineyard is symbolic.^ In the Psalms of Solomon, the. 
Book of Enoch, and in later Rabbinic literature, parables 
are found, both symbolic and typical ; but whereas not one 
of them has seized the imagination of mankind, the para- 
bles of Jesus remain to this day a source of delight and of 
deepest instruction to all sorts and conditions of men, and 
in age after age have exercised over the world a memorable 
influence. 

It is interesting to observe that our Lord expressly used 
parables to instruct the simple and ignorant multitude, 
whereas by earlier teachers they had been regarded as the 
prerogative of the Chaberim , or “ pupils of the wise.”" 
Tillers and herdsmen, says the Son of Sirach, are not found 
where parables are spoken.§ 

It is further remarked that, amid all the crude and auda- 
cious inventions of the Apocryphal Gospels, they do not 
venture to invent a single parable. The Divine Wisdom nec- 
essary to offer even a remote parallel to such instruction lay 
wholly beyond the sphere of the capacity of crude fabulists. 

The parables of Jesus took their tone in a great measure 
from the circumstances by which He was surrounded, and 
the class of people whom He was addressing.] For instance, 
the first series, delivered at Capernaum — seven or eight in 

*The address of Jotham (Judge ix. 7-15) is a fable. The scornful reply of 
Jehoash to Amaziah (2 Kings xiv. 9, 10) is a sort of symbolic parable. Comp. 
Heb. ix. 9. 

f 2 Sam. xii. 1-6. 

if There are many passages in Ezekiel (xv., xvi., xvii. 1-10, 22-24, xxiii.) 
and Isaiah (v. 1-6) which contain parabolic elements. 

§Ecclus. xxxviii. 33. 

| Goebel, pp. 21-23. 


FORM OF CHRISTS TEACHING. 22 7 

number — deals with the founding of God’s Kingdom; the 
second series, mainly given by St. Luke (x.-xix.) describes 
the progressive development of the Kingdom, and the atti- 
tude of its members toward God and toward the world ; the 
final series, which belong to the last period of Christ’s minis- 
try, relates to the future completion of the Kingdom at the 
end of its temporal development. 

One series of these parables was practically consecutive. 
“ The Sower exhibits the rise of the kingdom ; the Weeds 
sown by the devil, its obstacles ; the Mustard Seed and the 
Leaven, its growth ; the Treasure and the Pearl, its appro- 
priation by mankind ; the Net, the separation at the judg- 
ment, which closes the history of its development.” 

There was a reason for the adoption of the parabolic 
form of teaching, which our Lord explained. His parables 
resembled the pillar of fire, which to the hostile Egyptians 
was a pillar of cloud. At first He had spoken to the multi- 
tudes in similitudes indeed, but such as explained them- 
selves ; and when He first resorted to parables the disciples 
were astonished.* In answer to their question He explained 
the double object of this change of method. It was at once 
helpful and penal. To the earnest and faithful they gave 
light ; to the wilful and perverse they were as a veil. To 
the earnest, the sincere, the humble-minded, in proportion 
to their faithfulness, the parables were, as Seneca said of 
fables, “ adminicula imbecillitatis ”/ but, to those who cared 
nothing for the truth, or directly set themselves against it, 
the indifference which caused them to disdain the truth made 
of the parables a shroud to hide it from them.f Thus, as 
Bacon said, “ A parable has a double use — it tends to veil, 
and it tends to illustrate a truth. In the latter case it seems 
designed to teach ; in the former to conceal.”:); 

* Matt. xiii. io. 

f See the excellent article on Parables by the late Dean Plumptre in Smith’s 
Diet, of the Bible. 

% Bacon, De Sap . Veterum. The strong expression of Mark iv. 12, “ in 


228 


THE LIFE OF LIVES. 


How far any of the typical parables were borrowed from 
actual facts which had come under the cognisance of Jesus 
we are unable to say, though many of them read like 
descriptions of real events. None of them show any im- 
probability ; much less do they even transgress the limits 
of the possible. It is, however, a most interesting fact that 
we are able to trace the origin of one parable — though of one 
only — that of the Pounds.* It was delivered on the jour- 
ney from Jericho towards Jerusalem, and unintelligible as 
the notion of “ a nobleman going into a far country to seek 
a kingdom ” might seem to us , there was not one of our 
Lord’s hearers who would not at once think of Herod the 
Great, and of his son Archelaus, both of whom had done 
this very thing. They could not reign over Judaea without 
the permission of the all-powerful Caesar, and they had to 
seek it at Rome. Jesus had just passed by the splendid 
palace reared by Archelaus among the balsam-grovos of 
Jericho, and the thought of the tyrant would naturally be 
brought into His mind.f The parable recalls some actual 
incidents of the Ethnarch’s history, and since Christ utilised 
these events to convey deep and awful lessons, we are justi- 
fied in the conjecture that many others of the parables may 
have derived fresh force because they were directly bor- 
rowed from circumstances which were known to those who 
heard them. This parable also, like those of the Unjust 
Judge and the Unjust Steward, proves that the details of 
parables are not to be extravagantly forced ; for our Lord 
here employs the movements and actions of a bad and cruel 
prince to shadow forth certain truths in the relations of 
God to men. 

Absolute simplicity was the characteristic of the preach- 

order that seeing they may see, and not perceive,” is, in Matt. xiii. 13, “I 
speak with them in parables because seeing they see not.” Comp. Hos. xiv. 
9 ; Rev. xxii. 11. 

* Luke xix. 11-27. 

f Jos. Antt. ii. 4, 5, xvii. 13, 1 ; B. J. ii. 6, 3 ; Tac. Hist. v. 9. 


FORM OF CHRIST’S TEACHING. 229 

ing of the Son of God. It is interesting to notice that the 
first groups of parables are derived from natural facts ;* * * § the 
other three are not narratives, but dwell on single inci- 
dents. f 

The second group consists of parables mainly drawn from 
human events, and addressed to the disciples on the way 
from Galilee to Jerusalem, and before the closing scenes.^ 

The last group of parables — which were delivered during 
the closing days of Christ’s earthly life — are all derived from 
human conduct. § 

By far the larger number of parables are recorded by St. 
Matthew and St. Luke ; St. J ohn has no parable, and St. Mark 
only one which is peculiarly his own — that of the Seed grow- 
ing secretly (iv. 26). If we compare the parables preserved 
respectively by St. Matthew and St. Luke, we shall see 
that (as Archbishop Trench says) “ St. Matthew’s are more 
theocratic, St. Luke’s more ethical ; St. Matthew’s are more 
parables of judgment, St. Luke’s of mercy; those are 
statelier, these tenderer.” [ 

In the parables generally we mark “ the lessons which we 
may learn from the natural world on the progress and scope 
of Revelation, and the testimony which man’s own heart 
renders to the Christian morality.”!" Christ’s parables were 
the exact antithesis to those “ subtle ” and “ riddling ” para- 

* The Sower ; the Wheat and Tares ; the Mustard Seed ; the Seed cast into 
the Ground ; the Leaven. (Matt. xiii. ; Mark iv.) 

f The Hid Treasure ; the Pearl ; the Net. (Matt, xiii.) 

\ Such are the Two Debtors ; the Merciless Servant ; the Good Samaritan ; 
the Friend at Midnight ; the Rich Fool ; the Wedding Feast ; the Great Sup- 
per ; the Lost Sheep ; the Lost Piece of Money ; the Prodigal Son ; the Unjust 
Steward ; Dives and Lazarus ; the Unjust Judge ; the Pharisee and the Publi- 
can ; the Labourer in the Vineyard. (Luke vii., x., xi., xii,, xiii., xiv., xv., 
xvi., xviii.; Matt, xviii., xx.) 

§ The Pounds ; the Two Sons ; the Husbandmen ; the Marriage Feast ; the 
Ten Virgins ; the Talents ; the Sheep and Goats. (Luke xix., xx. ; Matt, xxi., 
xxii., xxv.) 

|| Trench, On the Parables , p. 28. 

^"Bishop Westcott, Introd. to the Gospels , p. 478. 


230 


THE LIFE OF LIVES. 


bles in which the son of Sirach tells us that the Scribes and 
ideal wise men delighted.* The general teaching of them 
all is in the direction of that large view of religion which 
uplifts it entirely above the formulae and functions with 
which it has been confused by the majority of mankind. 
Their one main object is to inculcate holiness, and to show 
that the only religion for which God cares is the religion of 
the heart. Again and again they impress on us the great 
duties of love, watchfulness, humility, and prayer, and show 
that perfect love toward God is most surely evinced by per- 
fect love towards, and service of, our fellow-men. They set 
before us the one supreme end of human life, which is to 
live in the conviction of God’s presence, and the knowledge ’ 
that in His presence is life. And with these eternal lessons- 
are intermingled the awful notes of necessary warning — 
that man cannot sin with impunity ; that our sins will 
always find us out ; that, against all pride, cruelty, hypoc- 
risy, and wickedness, “ our God is a consuming fire.” 
These lessons run through the whole of Scripture ; but 
“never man spake like this Man.” He taught, says Bishop 
Jeremy Taylor, “ by parables, under which were hid mys- 
terious senses, which shined through the veil, like a bright 
sun through an eye closed with a thin eyelid.” Was it 
strange that all the people “ hanged on Him fas the bee 
doth on the flower, the babe on the breast, the little bird on 
the bill of her dam? Christ drew the people after Him by 
the golden chain of His heavenly eloquence.”;): 

The parables remain as the most winning, yet at the 
same time the richest and divinest sources of moral and 
spiritual guidance. They do not furnish us with scholastic 
forms of creed, or intricate systems of morality, but they 
teach throughout one main doctrine — “ a consistent view of 
the right ideal relation between God and men, thoroughly 
pervaded by the idea of God as the living Father.” § Who 

* Ecclus. xxxix. 1-5. f Luke xix. 48, etjeuptfiaTo avrov ^ 

fj. Trapp. § Wendt ii. 390. 


FORM OF CHRIST’S TEACHING. 231 

could exhaust the depths of tenderness, and warning, and 
appeal, and revelation of Him whose mercy endureth for 
ever, which Jesus compressed into the few thrilling verses 
that tell the story of the Prodigal Son? Truly, of this par- 
able we may say with special force : 

“For Wisdom dealt with mortal powers, 

Where truth in closest words shall fail, 

When truth embodied in a tale 
Shall enter in at lowly doors.” 

The hard dogmatism and theoretic minutiae of an arrogant 
theology vanish like oppressive nightmares before this 
single parable in which Jesus reveals the heavenly secret of 
human redemption, not according to any mystical or crimi- 
nal theory of punishment, but anthropologically, psycholog- 
ically, theologically, to every pure eye that looks into the 
perfect laws of Olivet. Were we to be asked to name one 
page of all the literature of all the world since time began 
which had caused the deepest blessings, and kindled in the 
despairing hearts of men the most effectual belief in the 
possibility and efficacy of repentance, would any one hesi- 
tate to name the Parable of the Prodigal Son ? It shatters 
to pieces all the common theological conceptions of God 
the Father as a wrathful Judge, whose flaming countenance 
can only be softened by the compassion of God the Son ; or 
who only deals with men in the form of forensic arrange- 
ment by means of substitutes, and equivalents, and exact 
retributive vengeance. It sets Him forth as the All Merci- 
ful, whose heart is filled with a Father’s love; who is more 
ready to hear than we to pray ; who desireth not the death 
of a sinner, but rather that he should turn from his sins and 
be saved. It is the Evangelium in Evangelio, and, even 
after long centuries of Christianity, towers transcendently 
above the elder-brotherly spirit which so many who “ pro- 
fess and call themselves Christians ” display in all their 
dealings with their fellow-men, and even with their brother- 


232 THE LIFE OF LIVES. 

religionists whose belief varies ever so little from their 
own. 

Goebel classifies the parables under the heads of — L 
i. The Founding of the Kingdom, The Sower. 2. The 
Development of the Kingdom ( a ) in the immediate future ; 
(b) in its development to the end. 3. The Consummation 
of the Kingdom. II. The Right Attitude of the Members 
of the Kingdom (i.) towards God ; (ii.) towards the world ; 
(iii.) to men ; (iv.) to worldly goods. 

Bishop Westcott has given a classification of the parables 
in his Introduction to the Study of the Gospels (pp. 478-480). 
In main outline he divides them into — I. Parables drawn 
from the Material World — The Sower; The Tares; 
The Seed growing secretly; The Mustard Seed; The 
Leaven. [5] 

II. Parables drawn from the RELATION OF Man — (i.) To 
the Lower World : The Draw-net ; The Barren Fig-tree ; The 
Lost Sheep ; The Lost Drachm. [4] (ii.) To his Fellow - 

men, and in the Family : The Unmerciful Servant ; The Two 
Debtors; The Prodigal Son; The Two Sons. [4] (iii.) In 
Social Life : The Friend at Midnight; The Unjust Judge; 
The Ten Virgins ; The Lower Seats (Luke xiv. 7-1 1) ; The 
Great Supper; The King’s Marriage Feast. [6] (iv.) To 

God's Service : The Tower Builders ; The King Making 
War; The Unjust Steward; The Talents; The Pounds; 
The Wicked Husbandman; The Unprofitable Servants; 
The Labourers in the Vineyard. [8] (v.) To Providence : 

The Hid Treasure; The Man Seeking Pearls; The Rich 
Fool. [3] 

There are also three symbolic narratives : — The Publican 
and the Pharisee ; The Good Samaritan ; and Dives and 
Lazarus — which illustrate (in opposition to Judaism) the 
essential spirituality, the universal love, and the outward 
lowliness of Christianity. 

We may further notice that the general characteristics of 
our Lord’s parables were influenced by circumstances. In 


FORM OF CHRIST’S TEACHING. 233 

the brighter period of His ministry, before the enmity of 
the Pharisees had developed into deadly opposition, His 
parables mainly dwelt on the growth, holiness, and glory of 
the kingdom of heaven (Matt. xiii.). After the Transfigur- 
ation, and when He fully foresaw the end which awaited 
Him, they have stronger elements of warning mixed with 
their exhortations (Luke xi.-xiv.). The third series is 
more directly judicial and predictive (Luke xix., and in 
Matt, xviii.-xxv.). This is specially true of the Parables of 
the Rich Fool, the Barren Fig-tree, and the Great Supper, 
which convey the most solemn warnings. On the other 
hand, the whole depths of Divine tenderness are unfolded 
before us in the three Parables of the Lost Sheep, the Lost 
Drachm, and the Prodigal Son.* The duties of righteous- 
ness and mercy are enforced in the Parables of the Dis- 
honest Steward, Dives and Lazarus, and the Unmerciful 
Servant. The peril of self-righteousness is set forth in a 
few powerful touches in the Parable of the Pharisee and 
the Publican. 

While in every parable there is one main central lesson, 
there are many touches and incidental details which are 
often rich in instruction. Almost every marked phase in 
the history of human life comes within the compass of the 
story of the Prodigal Son. Yet we must be carefully on 
our guard against pressing every incident into the service 
of vast structures of theological dogmatism. It is, for 
instance, entirely unwarrantable to force the story of the 
Rich Man into the proof of the ghastly dogma of endless 
torments in hell fire ; and it is a horrible perversion of the 
story of the King’s Marriage Feast to distort the incidental 
phrase “ constrain them to come in” — as many Roman 
Catholic theologians have done — into a command to 

* Dr. Edersheim contrasts the teaching of Christ, “ There is joy in heaven 
over one sinner that repenteth,” with that of Pharisaism ( Siphri , p. 37. i)» 
which said, “ There is joy before God when those who provoke Him perish 
from the world.” 


2 34 


THE LIFE OF LIVES. 


practise the atrocities of the Inquisition, and the hellish 
crime of burning men alive for their religious opinions.* 

*See the wise remarks of Archbishop Trench, On the Parables , p. 369. Of 
course, “ constrain them to come in ” means constrain them by moral suasion 
(2 Tim. iv. 2 ; Matt. xiv. 22). “ Foris inveniatur necessitas,” says St. Chrys- 

ostom, “ intus nascitur voluntas.” Calvin wisely says, “ Nihil amplius quaeren- 
dum est quam quod tradere Christi consilium fuit ” (on Matt. xx. 1-16). 




CHAPTER XXII. 


THE SUBSTANCE OF CHRIST’S TEACHING. 

“I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life: no man cometh unto the 
Father but by Me.” — J ohn xiv. 6. 

“ Regnum caelorum quo emitur ? Paupertate, regnum ; dolore gau- 
dium ; labore, requies ; vilitate, gloria ; morte, vita.” — AUGUSTINE, De 
Sertn. in Morte. 

The heart of man — which in its hardness and pride is so 
naturally prepense to all that is worldly — has shown, every- 
where and always, a tendency to corrupt the very elements 
of spiritual religion. Without incessant watchfulness, and 
unless God sends to age after age His Prophets and Saints 
— whose usual reward has been the hate, slander, and per- 
secution of their fellow-men — the tendency of all religions 
has been to sink into formal religiosity. Men think it suffi- 
cient to draw nigh unto God with their mouth, and honour 
Him with their lips, while their hearts are far from Him ; 
and they worship Him in vain because, with innate hypoc- 
risy, they substitute for His requirements the command- 
ments of men. 

The one remedy for erring generations and perverted 
priesthoods, if they have left in them the faintest elements 
of sincerity, is to go back from the ever-accumulating 
masses of false human traditions to the teaching of Him 
whom they profess to worship as their Lord and their God. 
Much that to this day is taught and paraded as the doctrine 
of “ the church ” is in direct and flagrant antagonism to 
the teaching and example of the Son of God and of His 
immediate Apostles. 

Now, as far as the outward aspect of Judaism was con- 
cerned, there were in Christ’s days but two prominent 


235 


236 THE LIFE OF LIVES. 

“ schools ” of religion, namely, those of the Priests and of 
the Legalists. 

Christ entered into no relations with the Priests. He 
said nothing in commendation of them, or approval of 
their ideals, or acceptance of their religious views. They 
were absorbed in selfish worldliness and a ritualism which 
their insincerity had emptied of its original subordinate 
significance. The whole body of Priests were Sadducees 
who had become unspiritual sceptics and worshippers of 
Mammon. Jesus thought nothing of their pretensions, or 
of their system. Apart from an allusion to the High Priest 
Abiathar, who rightly broke the law by giving the shew- 
bread to David in his hunger, He scarcely mentions priests 
at all.* In one parable He described the cold-hearted and 
supercilious formalist who on the way to perform his func- 
tions passed with heartless indifference by the wounded 
wayfarer ;f and He told lepers, whom He had already 
cleansed by His word, to get from the priests the ordinary 
legal certificate that their leprosy was healed.;): Otherwise 
He has nothing to say either to them or of them, because 
they had no connection with the essential truths which He 
came to reveal. They were not teachers at all ; they had 
sunk into mere functionaries who contributed nothing to- 
spiritual religion, or even to elementary morality. 

The more numerous and predominant party was that of 
the Pharisees. Of them we have already spoken, and shall 
have to speak again later on. All that need here be said 
is that Christ rejected Pharisaism so utterly that, whereas- 
to all others His words were full of merciful tenderness, He 
was compelled again and again to denounce in burning 
utterances — which have been shown to be necessary in each 
successive generation — the deep-rooted hypocrisies of these 
haughty and pretentious formalists. 

What Christ with unvarying consistency taught, both by 

*Mark ii. 26 ; Luke vi. 4. -J- Luke x. 31. 

\ Matt. viii. 4 ; Luke v. 14. 


SUBSTANCE OF HIS TEACHING. 237 

His words and His example, was inward reality, not out- 
ward conformities . His religious practices were marked by 
undeviating simplicity. He taught that the kingdom of 
God is within us, and that it consists not in meats and 
drinks, but in righteousness, peace, and joy in believing. 
He taught that the kingdom of God is not eating and 
drinking, but holiness, and love, and joy in the Holy Ghost. 
He taught that it is not the food which goeth into a man 
which defiles him, but the evil thoughts which come out of 
him. Thus, by one word, “ He made all meats clean/’* 
He would have said with Jeremiah, “Thus said the Lord 
of Hosts, Add your burnt offerings unto your sacrifices 
and eat flesh. For I spake not unto your fathers, nor 
commanded them in the day when I brought them out of 
the land of Egypt concerning burnt-offerings or sacrifices: 
but this thing I commanded them, saying, Obey My 
Voice.” f 

Again, the Pharisees delighted in outward ablutions — 
hand-washings and the washing of cups and platters and 
brazen vessels and tables. For such practices Christ had 
no word of recognition, and many words of disparagement. 
The whole of what He had to reveal bore on the essence 
of heart-reality and spiritual pureness. We shall see here- 
after some of the minute and tortuous regulations on which 
the Pharisees insisted in the matter of fasts and ablutions. 
Christ practised no formal fast, and discouraged His dis- 
ciples from doing so ; He despised the hand-washings 
and ablutions of cups and platters which had nothing to do 
with cleanliness, but only with religious formalism. For 
those who desire to learn of Him, religion will be the love 
of God shown in love to man, and rites and ceremonies 
will sink into the most infinitesimal proportions. There 

* Mark vii. 19. 

f Jer. vii. 21-23. In other words “ though burnt-offerings are usually con- 
sumed by fire, as given to Jehovah, yet eat them as though they were mere 
flesh.” They are nothing to God without justice and kindness. 


THE LIFE OF LIVES. 


238 

is no true piety except such as consists in the bond of 
union between God and man — that direct and immediate 
relation of the personal creature to the personal Creator by 
which all true life can alone be determined. 

Without heart-sincerity, and rectitude of life, all forms, 
however ancient, are worthless. It is dangerous to elabor- 
ate and magnify the outward ceremonies of worship when 
they tend (as they too often do) to breed self-deceit, 
supercilious arrogance, and opinionated lawlessness. It 
is of no use to be free from outward crimes if the heart be 
unclean ; it is of no use to abstain from murder if the 
thoughts be full of hatred, and the words full of rage and 
slander ; it is of no use even to do good works if they are 
only done to obtain the applause or approval of men. 
Christ evidently regards the Levitic law, whatever may 
have been its date and origin, as given to the Israelites 
because of the hardness of their hearts, and as consisting 
intrinsically in “ weak and beggarly rudiments,” fitted only 
to train the disobedient childhood of the race. He came 
to abrogate it all. “ It hath been said to them of old 
time — but I say unto you.” * The essential conception of 
holiness from henceforth was to be faith and love towards 
God and the exhibition of that faith and love in constant 
service to our brethren who are in the world. And the 
chief means of attaining to this height was prayer — not 
formal prayers, verbose, stereotyped, wearisome, and 
interminable, abounding in vain repetitions and artificial 
phrases ; not prayers accompanied, like those of Dervishes 
and Stylites, with endless crossings, prostrations, and 
genuflexions — but brief prayers of humble, simple, and 
trustful earnestness. 

All this teaching had become most necessary. The 
Jews had abandoned the idolatry of false gods during the 
seventy years of disastrous exile ; but almost from the days 
of their restoration they began to fall into a new idolatry — 
the worship of the symbol and the letter. While they 
* Matt. v. 21, 23. 


SUBSTANCE OF HIS TEACHING. 


239 


professed to deify the Law, they emptied it of all its 
significance, and with cunning casuistry managed to evade 
its most searching requirements.* The result was a 
mixture of arrogant tyranny and spiritual uselessness — it 
was that common form of religionism which may be de- 
fined as “self-complacency flavoured by a comprehensive 
uncharitableness.” Religious attitudinising ended in a 
hypocritic life; a terrible obliquity of moral precepts and 
conduct ; a deplorable confusion of holiness with Levitic 
purity, and of sin with ceremonial defilements; a futile 
attempt to extort Divine favour by a mass of observances 
while it was disgracefully indifferent to inward holiness, f 
If any regard this view of Pharisaism as too severe, let 
me remind them that the Lord of Love characterised 
its votaries as “ fools and blind ” ; as “ the offspring of 
vipers ” ; devouring widows’ houses, and for a pretence 
making long prayers ; as washing the outside of the cup 
and of the platter, while within they were full of extortion 
and uncleanness. 

The Sermon on the Mount was the promulgation of the 
laws of Christ’s new kingdom. Conceive what the Sermon 
on the Mount would have been if it had been delivered by 
Caiaphas the Priest, or Simon the Pharisee, or any of their 
modern representatives! Would it not have been full of 
priestly usurpations, and petty orthodoxies, and the small 
proprieties of the infinitely little? Would it not have been 
deplorably empty of moral manliness and spiritual free- 
dom ? Christ touched on none of these things. Apart 
from two sacraments, accompanied by rites of the most 
elementary simplicity, He did not lay down one liturgical 
ordinance, or ceremonial injunction, or priestly tradition, 
or Pharisaic observance. No, but He pronounced beati- 
tudes on the meek and the loving, and precepts of self- 
denial, and inculcations of tenderness and sympathy. So 

* See Schtirer, i. 313-323, ii. 120-125. Scribes (Kitto and Smith). 

\ See Schtirer, ii. 91-106. 


240 


THE LIFE OF LIVES. 


broad, so simple, so free, so eternal and natural, are the 
essentials of real saintliness ; so universal are the sole 
requirements of Him who said, “ Learn of Me, for I am 
meek and lowly of heart, and ye shall find rest unto your 
souls.” To wash the hands in innocency, and so to come 
to' God’s altar — that is sainthood. To have the heart 
sprinkled from an evil conscience, void of offence toward 
God and toward man — that is sainthood. To behold the 
face of our brother in love ; to be pure, peaceable, gentle; 
to bring forth the fruits of the Spirit, which are love, joy, 
peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, 
temperance — that is the only sainthood of which Christ set 
the example, which Christ approves, which Christ will 
reward for ever. 


CHAPTER XXIII. 


THE UNIQUENESS OF CHRIST’S TEACHING. 

rt ’eori tovto ; Aidax r) kclivt). — MARK i. 27. 

“ Christianus miser vidert potest, inveniri non potest."— M inuc. 
Fel. Oct . 37. 

“ What if earth 

Be but the shadow of heaven, and things therein 
Each to the other like more than on earth is thought ? ” 

— Milton. 

The broad eternal characteristic of the teaching of the 
Lord of Life was that it ignored all that was not spiritual 
and essential. It constantly insisted on two fundamental 
truths — the infinite love of God, and the moral duty of man. 
We see the depth and uniqueness of Christ’s teaching, as 
well as the unequalled power of its methods, illustrated 
from the first in the eight opening beatitudes with which He 
began to train the disciples and the assembled multitudes. 
“They may be regarded,” says Dr. Plummer, “as an anal- 
ysis of perfect spiritual well-being, and nowhere in non- 
Christian literature shall we find so sublime a summary of 
the felicity attainable by man. They correct all low and 
carnal views of human happiness. They do not describe 
eight different classes of people, but eight different elements 
of excellence, and may all be contained in one and the same 
man.” 

Christ had nothing to say to the wretched questions 
which now agitate and distract Church parties. There is 
not the slightest allusion to his having ever used a purifica- 
tion for ceremonial uncleanness. His only reference to 
Jewish sacrificial worship was in His repeated reference to 


241 


242 


THE LIFE OF LIVES. 


the Prophet Hoshea, “ I will have mercy and not sacrifice/' 
He swept away with a divine scorn the idolatry of symbols. 
He was not in the most distant degree interested in “the 
sorts and qualities of sacrificial wood,” or “ the right burn- 
ing of the two kidneys and the fat.” It is hardly possibles 
to conceive the immeasurable disdain with which such 4 
questions as crowd the Talmud, and fill whole reams of. 
religious literature, would have been regarded by the Som 
of God. All that He had to say of the formalism which 
the ignorant people confounded with saintliness, was that 
they who practised it had made the word of God of none 
effect by their traditions. His attitude to the ceremonial 
Law was that it wak obsolete and abrogated. The popular 
religion had filled it with falsities and emptied it of mean- 
ing. He came to purge it from useless trivialities and to- 
substitute for it righteousness and true holiness. Nothing 
was more abhorrent to Him than the notion that the 
Infinite, Eternal, Almighty Father cared for, or was to be 
propitiated by external scrupulosities. Of what use, He 
asked, was the outward glistering of the whitewashed 
grave, which within was full of dead men’s bones and all 
uncleanness ? 

We see the essence of His teaching in His first great 
discourse. It has been well described as an answer to the 
question, “ What ought to be a man’s daily care upon 
earth?” The answer is to be found in the one word,. 
Whole-heartedness. A double-souled man (Sitpvxo?) is, as 
St. James says, “ unstable in all his ways.” He falls into 
the countless host of trimmers, who are content to be one 
hundredth part for God, and ninety-nine parts for them- 
selves and for the world. These are the mammon-wor- 
shippers and the self-worshippers, who devote themselves 
to greed, envy, self-importance, and the indulgence of their 
own guilty passions. 

But God will be content with no scant and divided serv- 
ice. Therefore Christ set Himself to teach us, Let your 


UNIQUENESS OF HIS TEACHING. 243 

treasure be with your heart, in heaven. Be in no wise 
anxious about the things of this world. If you are seeking 
with all your strength the approval of God, care nothing 
for the hate or scorn of men. Trust implicitly in God’s 
infinite goodness. For His sake love your brethren who 
are in the world. Regard all men as your brethren, 
pardoning and loving even the worst, and leaving them to 
God’s merciful judgment, not to that of your own spiritual 
conceit. Above all, beware of secret hypocrisy. Sancti- 
monious externalism may deceive men ; it cannot deceive 
God. Religion is not Pharisaism ; it is to love God with 
all your heart and your neighbour as yourself. This is the 
Law and the Prophets, and he who builds on this founda- 
tion builds upon a rock, and the house of his life can never 
be swept away by any earthly storms. 

By living up to this teaching we shall find that the King- 
dom of Heaven is now established upon earth. It is 
written, “ Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and His 
righteousness, and all else shall be added unto you.” * 

And this is illustrated by the attitude of our Lord 
toward the ancient Scriptures. The people, as they heard 
Him, might well exclaim, “ What is this? A new teach- 
ing ! ” In direct antithesis to the inferences which the 
tortuous ingenuity of men had forced out of the Law of 
Moses by putting it on the rack to their own destruction. 
He taught that all forms of righteousness were worthless, 
all precepts of righteousness insignificant, unless they rule 
the conduct, and dominate the heart. So far, indeed, from 
coming to destroy the Law and the Prophets, His object 
was to give them their sole valid and permanent sig- 
nificance. 

As regards the moral law, which Rabbinism, even in 
fundamental matters, often contrived to evade, He taught 
that it could only be fulfilled by fidelity to God in the 
inmost thoughts. From quantitative extensions of ordi- 
* Matt. vi. 33. See Wendt, i. 267. 


244 


THE LIFE OF LIVES. 


nance He recalled the thoughts of men to central obliga- 
tions. Instead of the allegorising casuistry of the Jewish 
fourfold exegesis, the Rabbinic Pardes, i. e., the Peshat or 
explanation, the Remez or “ hint,” the Darush or homiletic 
inference, the Sod or “ mystery ” — and the fourfold argu- 
ments and Seven Middoth or “ Rules ” of Hillel * — He 
bade men study the innermost meaning of the word of 
God. He appealed most often to the Prophets, and rati- 
fied their sweeping depreciation of the whole ceremonial 
Law when its requirements are made a substitute for true 
religion. Prophecy had long been dead in Israel, as it 
always dies when sacerdotalism reigns. “ The creative 
period had ceased,” even “ the interpretative period ” had 
ceased ; what now prevailed was the period of false literal- 
ism, mingled with ingenious perversions. The living voice 
had long been silent ; it had been replaced by “ spent 
echoes, broken into confused and inarticulate sound.” 
The pool of popular religion had become turbid, as it must 
do when it is not flushed by the living streams of that 
river of inspiration which maketh glad the city of God. 
The surface glitter of the Dead Sea shore does but hide 
the blight and barrenness beneath. It has been said that 
u what Jesus really did was to give utterance to a new 
principle, which explains all His teaching and furnishes 
the key to the mystery of His own religious genius. This 
great principle may be described, according to the side 
from which it is approached, as the Worth of Man, or the 
Love of God.”f 

The whole of religion must ultimately and essentially 
depend on the ideas which we form of God, and it is in 
*heir mean and narrow conceptions of God that all false 
religions, and all perversions and degradations of true 
religion, have gone astray. 

* Rabbi Ishmael expanded the Rule into thirteen, for which see Hershon, 
Talm. Miscell. p. 166. 

fVan Oort, v. 221. 


UNIQUENESS OF HIS TEACHING. 245 

If, with the Sadducees, we hold that there is no resur- 
rection, neither angel nor spirit, we shall try to line our 
pockets well in the world, and with complete insouciance 
to go through certain functions whether we believe in their 
efficacy or not ; and with Caiaphas and his brother-priests 
we shall be ready to commit any crime if we regard it as 
** expedient ” for our interests, or our party, and for the 
maintenance of the present state of things which we regard 
as advantageous to ourselves. 

If we be cruel and wrathful, we shall conceive of God as 
the Egyptian conceived of his Typhon, or the Moabite of 
his Chemosh, and shall suppose that He is a terrific, supra- 
human monster, a 

“ Moloch, horrid King, besmeared with blood 
Of human sacrifice, and parents’ tears ; 

Though, for the noise of drums and timbrels loud, 

Their children’s cries unheard who passed thro’ fire 
To His grim idol.” 

If we be jealously wrapped up in the serene infallibility 
of our own opinionated ignorance, and determined to 
crush all freedom of thought in order that we may keep 
our own usurped power over the hearts and consciences of 
our fellow-men, we shall be ready to rekindle the accursed 
balefires of Smithfield or of Seville, and to blacken the 
golden light of heaven with the smoke of hell, to get rid of 
men who are wiser and holier than ourselves. 

If we be dwarfed, and petty, and exacting in our concep- 
tions, we shall multiply fantastic obligations till they be- 
come like a mountain suspended by a single hair of false 
teaching; and we shall slander, and belittle, and persecute 
all who see deeper into the reality of things than ourselves. 
We shall look upon our whole relation to God as a sort of 
small bargaining in which we shall be repaid exact equiva- 
lents for all our tithes of mint, and anise, and cumin. 
What becomes of others who do not pay them we shall not 


246 


THE LIFE OF LIVES. 


greatly care, but shall say with the Pharisees, “ This people 
that knoweth not the Law is accursed.” 

If our hearts be full of gloom and self-absorbed individu- 
alism — if we never raise our eyes upwards from our own 
unworthiness, but regard God as a sternly pitiless Avenger, 
dealing with us after our sins, rewarding us after our iniqui- 
ties, and never appeased till we have paid the uttermost far- 
thing — then we shall adopt an exaggerated asceticism, and 
shut ourselves up in a half-dazed seclusion equally injurious: 
to ourselves and useless to the world. 

Now He who came from the bosom of the Father to re- 
veal Him repudiated all such corruptions. He taught the 
Fatherhood of God towards all His creatures. He taught 
man 

“ to turn 

To the deep sky, and from its splendours learn 
By stars, by sunsets, by soft clouds that rove 
Its blue expanse, or sleep in silvery rest, 

That nature's God hath left no place unblest 
With founts of beauty for the eye of love.” 

This was His essential revelation. He pointed to this as 
the teaching of Nature. Doth not God cause His sun to 
shine on the evil and on the good, and send His rain to the 
just and to the unjust? Doth He not clothe the lilies of 
the field, though they toil not, neither do they spin, with a 
glory surpassing the magnificence of Solomon ? Doth He 
not feed the ravens, though they neither sow nor reap, nor 
gather into barns? Doth He not care even for each one of 
the millions of feeble sparrows, so that not one of them 
falleth to the ground without His will? 

And if this be the revelation of Nature, how much more 
is it the revelation of Grace? Hence the Parable of the 
Prodigal Son represents the essence of Christ’s teaching as 
to the relation of God to men. The wild, dissolute youth 
had flung away the love and left the holy home of his 
father ; had hastened into the far country ; had there lived 


UNIQUENESS OF HIS TEACHING. 247 

the life of a riotous, self-indulgent debauchee, disgracing the 
name he bore, and devouring his living with harlots ; and 
he had sunk by inevitable retribution into contempt and 
misery. Deserted by his fair-weather friends the moment 
when nothing more was to be got out of him, he had passed 
from extravagant luxury into abject serfdom. In the low- 
est abyss of his degradation, he had been sent into the fields 
to feed swine ; and, since it was no longer possible to sate 
the gnawing of his hunger, he would fain at least have filled 
his belly with the coarse carob-pods which were the food 
of swine ; yet even of these no man gave unto him. It 
was only when he had sounded the uttermost abyss of mis- 
ery that he thought of his loving father, and of his lost 
home, and of his willing forfeiture of all that he had re- 
ceived of nobleness and grace, once more took possession of 
his thoughts. He “ came to himself.” He had abandoned, 
he had done his utmost to destroy and obliterate, his true 
self. But though the light of grace may dwindle to a spark, 
and the lamp of the Holy Spirit within us be almost 
quenched, it cannot be wholly lost in this life, or man would 
sink irredeemably into a beast or a demon. In this awful 
catastrophe the poor, lost youth determined to fling him- 
self unreservedly on his father’s love, and to plead for read- 
mission into the home of his early innocence — no longer as 
a son, but as a hired servant. So he arose and returned ; and 
while he was yet a long way off his father saw him, and ran 
to meet him with the outstretched arms of infinite compas- 
sion, and kissed him tenderly ; and when the son had sobbed 
forth upon his neck the confession of his despairing peni- 
tence, the father ordered the best robe to be brought at 
once to cover his swinish rags, and the fatted calf to be 
killed for his banquet. 

This is the picture of God’s full, free, unconditioned for- 
giveness to all who seek Him, and call upon Him, and 
repent of their old sins. There is no question of repara- 
tion ; no demand for the equivalent payment of a debt; no 


THE LIFE OF LIVES. 


248 

claim for the pound of flesh ; no requirement of a “ substi- 
tute ” ; no need for the intrusion of intermediaries ; but, 
as a father pitieth his own children, even so is the Lord 
pitiful to them that fear Him. The prodigal’s anguish of 
loving penitence was dearer to the father’s heart than the 
prim, loveless, quantitative goodness and unlovely spite of 
the elder son, who was still far astray and saw no need for 
repentance. And all this, let us observe, was taught with a 
simplicity which a child might understand. It was not ex- 
panded into vast folios of a Summa Theologies. It was not 
thrown into rigid and technical formulae. It was set forth 
in words exquisitely beautiful as a simple, eternal, trans- 
cendent truth, clothed in a form intelligible to the humblest 
and least instructed souls, yet full of sublime meanings 
inexhaustible by men of the loftiest genius. 

Was it wonderful if, after having become familiar with 
such teaching, St. Peter should exclaim on behalf of all the 
Apostles, “ Lord, to whom shall we go ? Thou hast the 
words of eternal life.” 

In this relation of God to man was implicitly involved the 
duty of man to God. The first step towards the Kingdom 
of Heaven was to realise the truth that love to God necessi- 
tated the feeling of brotherhood to man. When the can- 
did Scribe recognised that the Ten Commandments were 
summed up in Two, and said, “ Of a truth, Master, Thou 
hast well said that there is none other but God ; and to love 
Him with all the heart, and to love his neighbour as him- 
self, is much more than all whole burnt-offerings and sacri- 
fices,” Jesus said unto him, “Thou art not far from the 
kingdom of God.”* 

This was the practical summary of Christ’s earliest teach- 
ing. He pointed out the secret of salvation ; the inmost 
essence of love and joy and peace. This is the Magna 
Charta of the Kingdom of Heaven. The Beatitudes reversed 
all the judgments of the world, as well as of the Sadducees 
and of the Scribes. They set forth the four virtues of 

* Mark xii. 34. 


UNIQUENESS OF HIS TEACHING. 249 

humility, holy sorrow, meekness, and yearning after right- 
eousness ; and the virtues of mercy, purity, peaceableness, 
and the endurance of persecution and reproach. Thus d^ 
Jesus cancel, revise, or fill with far deeper spiritual reality 
the moral teaching of the world. He showed that what the 
world regarded as misery might not only lead to, but actually 
be, the present fulness of holy joy. God’s blessing rests not 
on the arrogant, and the self-satisfied, but on the seekers 
after God, and those who with pure hearts devote their 
lives to works of compassion, in saving the world from cor- 
ruption, and setting a shining example to its slaves and 
votaries. He extended the obligations of the Decalogue to 
the thoughts of the heart. The essence of murder consists 
in hatred, in unreasoning anger, and bitter speech ; the true 
fulfilment of the sixth commandment lies in peace towards 
all men. The essence of adultery lies in dissolute imagina- 
tions, and no sacrifice is too severe which is required for the 
attainment of inward purity. The lex talionis — a conces- 
sion to wild and unprotected times — may be reversed by a 
spirit of non-resistance and self-suppression. Love, which 
the Rabbis had confined to love of our neighbours, must be 
extended to our enemies. Ostentation in well-doing, or in 
alms-giving, corrupts all its blessedness. Prayer must be 
humble, secret, sincere, free from vain repetitions, the out- 
come of an intense longing to fulfil God’s law. Desire for 
earthly treasure must be superseded by a love for God 
which expels minor affections, and a trust in God which 
excludes the possibility of earthly anxieties. For the cen- 
soriousness which is ever passing judgment on others, the 
children of the kingdom must aim at the sincerity which is 
only severe to our own shortcomings. God’s mercy and 
lovingkindness are infinite, and as we rely on His bounty 
for ourselves, we must show the same to others. “ Narrow 
is the gate and straitened the way ” which leads to the 
attainment of these aims.* We must never suffer ourselves 
to be turned from that narrow gate, or driven out of that 
* Matt. vii. 14. 


250 


THE LIFE OF LIVES. 


strait path. We must judge of religion not by its demon- 
strativeness, but by its fruits. Love, obedience, sincerity, 
simplicity — these are the eternal bases of the spiritual life. 

The only superstructure of religion which can ever abide 
the rush of the whirlwind and the sweeping of the flood is 
that which is built on the words and deeds of the Son of 
Man. Alike in form and substance His teaching stands 
alone. It is at once radiantly simple, and unutterably pro- 
found. It is, as St. Augustine said, like a great ocean on 
whose surface is the avrffnSydv the “ ever-twin- 

kling smile ” which charms even children, yet whose depths 
are unfathomable.* It bears upon it a certain ineffable 
stamp of divinity which Priests and Pharisees have often 
perverted ; but which no human being — no Prophet who 
came before Jesus, no Apostle or Evangelist, who followed 
Him ; no Gentile philosopher, no Eastern Theosophist, no 
self-satisfied Agnostic, no modern enquirer with all the 
learning and wisdom of the world to draw from at his will 
— has ever been able in the most distant degree to equal, 
much less to surpass. Many have uttered wise words, and 
written noble books ; but either they have soon been com- 
paratively forgotten, or have only reached the few. The 
simplest words of Christ have been as arrows of lightnings 
which still quiver in the hearts of millions of every race, as 
they have done in every age, and which are blessedly pow- 
erful to heal the very wounds which they inflict on the 
awakened consciences of men. 


* Aug. Conf. xii. 14. 


CHAPTER XXIV. 


THE TITLES OF JESUS AND THE BROTHERHOOD OF MAN. 

“ The first man, Adam, became a living soul ; the last Adam became 
a life-giving spirit.” — i Cor. xv. 45. 

Our Lord used various titles to describe Himself. 

He called Himself “ the Christ,” i. e., the Messiah, the 
Anointed One, anointed by the grace of God to preach the 
Gospel to the poor.* * * § At an earlier period of the ministry 
He did not wish His Messiahship to be openly proclaimed 
(Mark viii. 31), and He separated from the idea of Messiah- 
ship the notion of earthly kingship.f The Messianic faith 
was a desire, a hope, a promise, and Jesus fulfilled this 
idea4 

He alludes to His Davidic descent, and was often ad- 
dressed by others as the Son of David. % 

He sometimes spoke of Himself as the Son of God ; [ 
Lut this title was generally given Him by others.^ Once 

* More distinctly at the close of His ministry (Matt, xxiii. 8, xxiv. 5; Mark 
ix. 41, xi. 10). 

f Mark x. 42; Luke xii. 14. 

\ Hausrath, ii. 223. 

§ Matt. ix. 27, xii. 23, xv. 22, xx. 30, xxi. 9, etc.; Mark x. 47, xi. 10; John 
vii. 42. Com. Rom. i. 3. On this title, see Dalman, Die Worte Jesu , pp. 
260-266. 

|| Matt. xi. 27, xxvi. 63, 64, xxvii. 43; Mark xiii. 32, xiv. 61; Luke x. 21, 
22; John i. 16-18, iii. 35, 36, v. 20-26, vi. 40, viii. 35, 36, ix. 35, x. 36, 
xiv. 13, xvii. 1. St. Matthew records the prophecy of Isaiah (vii. 14) in 
which Jesus is called Emmanuel — “God with us” — not merely ovv ijfuv ( of 
accompaniment), but fieB' j/fiuv (“ God in the common nature of us all ”). 

TT By the Angel Gabriel (Luke i. 35); by John the Baptist (John i. 34): by 
Nathanael (Johni. 50); by St. Peter (John vi. 69; Matt. xvi. 16); by Martha 
(John xi. 27); by Satan (Matt. iv. 3, 6); by the multitude (Mark xv. 39; by 
demoniacs (Matt. viii. 29; Mark v. 7); by the centurion (Matt, xxvii. 54); by 


251 


252 


THE LIFE OF LIVES. 


only, in St. John, He describes Himself as “the Paraclete,” 1 
or Divine Advocate.* He does not use of Himself the 
title of “The Chosen One” (Luke ix. 35, xxiii. 35).+ 

The remarkable designation of “ The Word ” is given 
to Christ by St. John alone (John i. 14). As he opens his 
Gospel with the phrase, “ In the beginning,” which is also 
the first word in the Book of Genesis ( BereshitJi ), the title 
may be a reference to the truth that “ the worlds were 
made by the Word of God.” Christ was the Incarnate 
Word. Philo had written much of the Logos, but without 
the most distant approach to any conception that the 
Word could could ever “ be made flesh, and dwell among; 
us.” In the Targums — ancient paraphrases of the Hebrew 
Scriptures — “ the action of God is constantly, though not 
consistently, referred to His Word ( Memra and Deburali ).” 
In the Talmudic writings we find the Metatron, a sort of 
divine intermediary between God and man. In the Apoc- 
ryphal books of the prae-Christian epoch we find “ Wis- 
dom ” spoken of repeatedly as a person ; even in the 
Pentateuch and the Prophets we find mention of “ the 
Angel of the Presence” (Gen. xxxii. 24; Ex. xxxiii. 12; 
Hos. xii. 4; Is. lxiii. 9, etc.). St. John was doubtless well 
aware of these unconscious, or half-conscious, prophecies ; 
but the identification of “the Word” with the Man Christ 
Jesus transcends all that had previously been thought or 
written.;): St. John was inspired to reveal with perfect 

the disciples (Matt. xiv. 33; John xx. 31); by the Evangelists (Mark i. 1; John 
i. 18); by the voice from heaven (Matt. xvii. 5). In the Apocalyptic literature 
the Messiah is regarded as the Son of God. Enoch cv. 2; 4 Esdras viii. 28*, 
xiii. 32, 37, 52, xiv. 9. See Schlirer, ii. 11, 158. Comp. Mark xii. 35-37. 

*Comp. Job xiv. 16; Matt, xxviii. 19. The word “ Paraclete,” or Advocate,, 
is only found in St. John — “ Christ as the Advocate pleads the believer's cause: 
with the Father against the Accuser Satan (1 John ii. 1); the Holy Spirit 
pleads the believer’s cause against the world and also its cause with the 
believer” (John xiv. 26, xv. 26). Westcott. 

f Comp. Is. xliii. 10; 1 Peter ii. 4. 

X On the whole subject, see Bp. Westcott’s Introd. to the Gospel of St. John r 
pp. xv. ff. 


253 


THE TITLES OF JESUS. 

clearness that “ the personal Being of the Word was 
realised in active intercourse and in perfect communion 
with God,” and at the same time in historic manifestation 
and nearest spiritual influence upon the hearts of men. 

But the designation which Christ ordinarily adopted, 
and which He chose for Himself, was “ the Son of Man.” 

There may be in this title a dim and indirect allusion to 
Dan. vii. 13, where the word is Bar-Enosk. The phrase is 
used ninety times of the Prophet Ezekiel, though he never 
applies it to himself. Christ used it eighty times, and 
always of Himself. It is only applied to Him by others in 
passages which, like Acts vii. 56, Rev. i. 13-20, imply His 
exaltation. But since in Dan. vii. 13 this phrase is ex- 
plained to be equivalent to “the saints of the Most High,” 
in antithesis to “ the beasts ” who represent the kingdoms 
of the world, the allusion to Daniel could only be very 
indirect. The prophet does not speak of “ the Son of 
Man,” but of “ one like a son of man.” In the later 
Jewish Apocalypses — the Psalms of Solomon, the Book of 
Enoch, and the Apocalypse of Baruch — the Messiah is 
indeed a Person, a King and Judge; but not in the Book 
of Daniel. “ The Second Man is the Lord from heaven.” 
That the title was not a synonym for “ the Messiah ” seems 
to be proved by the question, “ Who do men say that I 
the Son of Man am ? ” * 

Upon the lips of Christ the title had a very deep mean- 
ing, which throws light on His entire mission and revela- 
tions. He used the phrase “ The Son of Man” to imply 
His federal Headship of Humanity, as one whom God had 
highly exalted because of His self-humiliation in taking 
our flesh (Phil. ii. 6-1 1). It called attention to Him as 
“ the Second Adam,” who came to restore the Eden lost 
by the sins of the First Adam. In the Old Testament the 
phrase “ Son of Man ” had been constantly used to repre- 
sent man in his feebleness, man in his nothingness before 
* Matt. xvi. 13; Mark viii. 37; Luke ix. 18. 


254 


THE LIFE OF LIVES. 


the Majesty of God;* and Jesus adopted it because, in all 
senses and to the full, He came to bear our griefs and to 
carry our sorrows, while nevertheless He came as the Ideal, 
as the Representative, of Humanity in all its possible 
nobleness, when it ha^ been forgiven, redeemed, and filled 
with the Holy Spirit of God. “The Son of God,” says 
St. Augustine, “was made the Son of Man, that ye who 
were sons of men might be made sons of God.” He came 
as the divine yet human Brother of the whole human race ; 
as the Elder Brother in the great family of man. He came 
to extend to all mankind that infinite tenderness which the 
particularism of the Jews had supposed to be confined to 
the sons of their own nation. In the Old Testament God 
by the voice of His Prophets had addressed words of 
tender, compassionate affection to the children of Israel. 
He had said : 

“ As an eagle stirreth up her nest, 

Fluttereth over her young, 

Spreadeth abroad her wings, 

Taketh them, beareth them on her wings, 

So the Lord alone did lead him.”f 


He had said — 

“ Is Ephraim My dear son ? is he a pleasant child ? for since I spake 
against him, I do earnestly remember him still. Therefore My heart is 
troubled for him ; I will surely have mercy upon him, saith the Lord.” f 

*Num. xxiii. 19-22; Ps. viii. 4: “What is man that Thou art mindful of 
him, and the Son of Man that Thou so regardest him? Man is like a thing of 
nought, his time passeth away like a shadow.” Job xxv. 6 : “ How much less 
man that is a worm; and the son of man that is a worm ? ” Is. li. 12: “ The son 
of man that shall be made as grass” (comp. Ps. cxlvi. 3) Ezekiel (ii. 1, 3) had, 
perhaps, chosen this designation to emphasise “ the self-reflection as to the 
distance between God and him.” But though the title Ben- Adam is applied to 
him nearly ninety times, he never used it of himself. Ben- Adam may apply to 
any man (Job xxv. 6, etc.). The Chaldee Bar-Enosh, “ son of man in his 
frailty,” is found in Daniel (vii. 13, etc.). Beni ish , “ filii viri,” is found in 
Ps. iv. 3, xlix. 2, etc., for highborn or wealthy men. 

f Deut. xxxii. 11. JJer. xxxi. 20. 


255 


THE TITLES OF JESUS. 

He had said — 

“They shall be Mine, saith the Lord of Hosts, in that day when I 
make up My jewels, and I will spare them as a man spareth his own 
son that serveth him.” * 

But the Son of Man had come to reveal that God has no 
favourites ; that He is the merciful and loving Father of all 
the race of man ; that He has not merely flung us into the 
chaos of a wretched and inexplicable existence by the 
unimpeded operation of blind laws, “dark as night, inexor- 
able as destiny, merciless as death, which have no ear to 
hear, no heart to pity, no arm to save ” ; but that “ His 
tender mercy is over all His works” ; and that, above all, 
“ the Spirit which He made to dwell in us yearneth over us 
even to jealous envy,”f and “ maketh intercession for us 
with groanings which cannot be uttered.” \ 

Nothing could have been more radically subversive of 
the current Jewish views in their narrow exclusiveness than 
this teaching of the Son of Man, and the way in which He 
illustrated it by all the relations of His life. The religion 
of man is essentially dependent on the ideas which it 
cherishes of God and of Man. The Pharisees had degraded 
both conceptions. To them God was a Being who chiefly 
delighted in nullities; and on the majority of men they 
looked down from the inch-high pedestal of their own 
imaginary superiority. 

Alike by all His words and all His deeds the Son of Man 
came to sweep away this sandhill of pretentious ignorance, 
and to substitute for it the Eternal Temple of the Living 
God.§ 

Hence the unlimited kindness, courtesy, forbearance, 
respect which He observed always to all sorts and condi- 
tions of men, in the world. The poet says that : 

f James iv. 5. 

§ Hos. vi. 6 ; Matt. v. 17, vii. 18, ix. 13, xii. 7* 


* Mai. iii. 17. 

\ Rom. viii. 26. 


256 


THE LIFE OF LIVES. 


“ Not a man for being simply man 
Hath any honour; but honour for those honours 
Which are without him, as place, riches, favour — 

Prizes of accident as oft as merit.” 

But the bearing of the Son of Man alike to the high and to 
the low, to the rich and to the poor, to the sick and to the 
sound, to the gifted and to the ignorant, was always full of 
that infinite respect for the work of God’s hands which 
founded the brotherhood of men upon the living rock of 
the fatherhood of God. He called Himself the Son of Man, 
because, as the representative of all that is beautiful and 
good in human nature, He came to restore to man that 
ineffaceable dignity which he had forfeited and lost.* 

(i.) Nothing could be more virulent than the hatred of the 
Jews for the Samaritans , which still continues, and which 
naturally provoked the most violent reprisals. A little 
tact, a little conciliatoriness on the part of the Jews, even in 
the days of Ezra and Nehemiah, might have obviated the 
miseries which arose from this age-long friction. If the 
Samaritans denied all hospitality to Jewish pilgrims ;f if 
they were ready to refuse even a cup of cold water, which 
the primary principle of Eastern hospitality required ; if 
they mocked, and attacked, and sometimes slew, those who 
were on their way to the Jewish feasts ; if they caused con- 
fusion and irregularity by mock fire-signals at Passovertide ; 
if some of their fanatics had even stolen into the Temple, 
when the gates were open at midnight during the Feast, to 
render the Passover impossible by strewing the Temple 
with dead men’s bones, :£ — the Jews were in no small 
measure to blame for this deep-seated animosity. They 

* Jesus applies to Himself the word avOpuTzoc (> homo ), a human being (John 
viii. 40. Comp. 2 Tim. ii. 25). The word avijp ( Vir, a man in his personal 
dignity) is applied to Him by the Baptist (John i. 30), by Cleopas (Luke xxiv. 
19), and by St. Paul (Acts xvii. 31). See Canon Mason, The Conditions of 
our Lord's Life on Earth, pp. 46-48. 
f Luke ix. 3. 

\ Jos. Antt, xviii. 2, 2. Comp. xx. 6, 1 ; B. J. ii. 12, 6. See ante , p. 139. 


THE TITLES OF JESUS. 257 

had admitted into one of their half-sacred books the 
passage : 

“ There be two manner of nations which my heart abhorreth ; and the 
the third is no nation. They that sit upon the mountain of Samaria, 
and they that dwell among the Philistines, and that foolish people that 
dwell in Sichem.”* 

In our Lord’s time, to call a man “ a Samaritan ” was as 
bad as to call him a demoniac. f Samaritans were regarded 
as excommunicate and accursed ; they were denied all 
share in the Resurrection ; it was doubtful whether it was 
lawful to partake of any of the produce of their soil ; to 
eat their bread was like eating the flesh of swine ; and 
their women were despised as specially abhorrent.;): 

Yet the Son of Man, as in the hot noonday He sat 
*‘thus” by Jacob’s well, did not for a moment hesitate to 
ask drink of a poor sinful woman of Samaria ; to speak to 
her with uttermost kindness ; to reveal to her — and to her 
first — His Messiahship ; to preach to, and stay among her 
hated and heretical countrymen, making no difference 
between them and the dwellers in Holy Jerusalem. Nay, 
even when He and His disciples were churlishly rejected, 
and refused ordinary hospitality at the border village of 
Engannim, and when “ the Sons of Thunder,” in their 
impetuous indignation, wanted Him to call down fire from 
heaven upon them, even as Elijah did, He at once, without 
a gleam of resentment against the churlish villagers, turned 
and rebuked James and John with the words, “Ye know 
not of what spirit ye are, ye. For the Son of Man came 
not to destroy men’s lives, but to save.” § Very shortly 
after this He pronounced His pathetic eulogy on the only 
one of the ten cleansed lepers who returned to give Him 
thanks, and he was a Samaritan. [ And, more even than 

* Ecclus. 1. £5, 26. f John viii. 48. 

\ Pirqe, R. Eliezer, 38 ; Book of Jubilee , 30, quoted by Hausrath, i. 26. 
See, too, Schiirer, Div. ii. 1, p. 8. 

§ Luke ix. 55. 


| Luke xvii. 16. 


THE LIFE OF LIVES. 


258 

this, He chose the hated and heretical Samaritan as a 
model of right action to mocking Scribes, cold-hearted 
Priests, and unmerciful Levites.* 

(ii.) For the Gentiles also He showed the same large con- 
siderateness. He was indeed primarily sent to “the lost 
sheep of the House of Israel.” But whem the Gentile^ 
centurion of Capernaum came to Him, relying on the mere 
utterance of His word, and not deeming himself worthy 
that He should enter under his roof, the Son of Man not 
only granted his petition, but added, “ I have not found so 
great faith, no, not in Israel.” f He seemed, indeed, to chill, 
the urgency of the poor Syro-Phoenician woman, but it was 
only because He desired to evoke and to crown the 
indomitable resoluteness of her faith. \ He unfavourably 
contrasted His own generation in their hard unbelief with 
the people of Nineveh, and the Queen of the South, and 
the widow of Sarepta, and declared that it should be better 
for Tyre and Sidon, yea, even for Sodom and Gomorrha, in 
the Day of Judgment, than for Chorazin and Bethsaida, 
and His own Capernaum. § And when some Gentiles who 
had come to His last Passover — “certain Greeks” — came 
to Philip to find some way of arranging a meeting with 
Him, so far from coldly and haughtily repudiating their 
desire, He rejoiced in this sign that the hour was come 
that the Son of Man should be glorified.! He had 
declared, long before, in language of unprecedented — and 
to His Jewish hearers, of repellent — strangeness, that 
“ many a Gentile should be admitted into the kingdom of 
heaven: but the children of the kingdom should be" cast 
out.”! These were preliminary indications of the vast 
mission which He left to be carried out after His depart- 
ure : “ Go ye into all the world and preach the Gospel, 

and make disciples of all the nations.”** The Chosen. 

*Luke x. 28-37. f Matt. viii. 10. 

§ Matt. xi. 20-24. 

If Matt. viii. 12 ; Luke xiii. 28, 29. 


X Matt. xv. 21-28. 

| John xii. 20-23. 

** Matt, xxviii. 19.. 


259 


THE TITLES OF JESUS. 

People had rejected Him, and Crucified Him to their own 
destruction ; thenceforth His servants were to go forth into 
the highways and hedges and constrain to come in even the 
poor, and the maimed, and the blind, and the lame. 

In the Eternal Temple of Christ there was no Chel or 
Soreg , with inscriptions threatening death to any Gentile 
who dared to enter, and by entering to pollute, the hal- 
lowed enclosure. The middle wall of partition was broken 
down ; nay, the veil of the Temple was rent in twain from 
the top to the bottom, and free access was given into its 
very Holy of Holies to the more genuine priesthood of all 
who were pure in heart. The Jews regarded all Gentiles 
as utterly unclean, and all intercourse with them as a 
source of ceremonial pollution. The Jews, as St. Paul 
says, were “ contrary to all men.” * It was unlawful for a 
Jew to enter the house of a Gentile or to hold any close 
communion with him.f The Talmudic treatise, Avoda 
Zara,% directs that if a Jew brought so much as a -stone or 
a gridiron from a Gentile, it must be made red-hot before it 
could be accounted clean, and it was illegal even to drink 
milk if a heathen had milked the cow.§ What a tremen- 
dous reversal of such “ religious ” conceptions was the decla- 
ration that Gentiles from the East and the West should be 
preferred to Jews, and sit down with Abraham, Isaac, and 
Jacob themselves at the marriage supper of the Lamb ! || 

(iii.) No less deep was Christ’s tender regard for the poor, 
the destitute, the ignorant, the physically wretched, those 
of whom men spoke as “common people,” and “the vulgar 

multitude ” : 

“ Of men the common rout 
That, wandering loose about, 

Grow up and perish as the summer fly, 

Heads without name, no more remembered.” 

* Thess. ii. 15. t Acts x. 28 ; John xviii. 28. 

\ Zara v. 12. §A/. ii. 6. 

|| Comp. Acts xi. 18. The feeling of the Jews against Gentiles is illustrated 
in Acts xiii. 45 5 1 Thess. ii. 14-16. 


260 


THE LIFE OF LIVES. 


These were all swept by Pharisaic contempt into one com- 
mon dust-heap, unworthy of notice — except the drawing 
back the hem of the garment so as not to touch them. 
They were disdainfully massed together under the common 
name of “ the people of the land.” To these they applied 
Is. xxvii. ii. “It is a people of no understanding, there- 
fore He that hath made them will not have mercy upon 
them.”* Hence even Rabbi the Holy once exclaimed, 
“ Woe is me ! I have given my morsel to an Am ha- 
< civets ! ” — a man who does not recite the Shema ! a man who 
wears no Tsitsith and no phylacteries, and does not wait on 
the pupils of the wise ! f No parley must be held with 
such ; no Chaber , i. e. } no member of the Rabbinic school, 
must buy fruit from them or sell it to them, or receive one 
of them as a guest, or travel with them, or regard their 
wives and daughters as other than an abomination. Nay, 
they might be “ torn open like a fish.”;): Their salutations 
were only to be noticed by a reluctant nod of the head. 
No calamity ever befalls the world except through them. 
If an am ha-arets but touched a vine-cluster, the whole 
wine-press, according to Rabbi Chejah, became unclean ; 
and everything within reach of his hand is defiled. § 

It may be imagined, then, how startling was the reversal 
of current judgments, how absolute the reprobation of 
Pharisaic prejudices, when the Son of Man came to seek 
and save those despised and lost ones; mingled with them, 
ate with them, taught them, healed them, extended His 

* Berachoth, f. 33, 1. f Id. f. 47, 2. 

\ This vulgar piece of Rabbinic bluster occurs (with more to the same effect) 
in Pe sac him, f. 49, 1. 

§ Pesachim , f. 49, 2. Avdth ii. 6. Here, even Hillel says, “ No boor is a 
sinbearer ; nor is the am ha-arets pious.” (Comp. John vii. 49, “ This multi- 
tude that knoweth not the law are accursed.”) Taanith , f. 14, 2. Bava 
Bathra , f. 8, 1. Avodah Zara, f. 75, 2. These passages from the Talmud are 
collected by Hamburger, Real. Encycl. fur Bibel und Talmud, ii. s. v. Am 
ha-arets ; and Mr. Hershon, in his Talmudic Miscellany , pp. 17, 91, 92; 
Treasures of the Talmud , pp. 98, 127 ; Tabaroth, ch. 7 ; Hershon, Genesis 
ncc. to the Talmud, p. 443. 


26 i 


THE TITLES OF JESUS. 

main work of compassion and amelioration to the phys- 
ically destitute and the utterly ignorant ! The “ people 
of the land,” on whom the religious leaders looked down 
with such unutterable contempt, were the normal hearers 
whom the Son of Man addressed in Galilee. They might 
be chilled and brutalised by contempt, but could only be 
uplifted to the true possibilities of human greatness and 
goodness by sympathy and tenderness — “ by quickening 
them to a sense of their own worth, and restoring them to 
self-respect.” He did not speak to them with lofty conde- 
scension, but with brotherly tenderness. 

(iv.) If there was one class in Palestine which was more 
hated and despised than all others, it was the class of the 
Publicans , or tax-collectors.* The strict Jews were suffi- 
ciently horrified by the thought that the Holy Land, which 
in their view could only be lawfully taxed for sacred pur- 
poses, should in anyway be liable to pay imposts to heathen 
conquerors for the use of a heathen state and a heathen 
emperor. But the maladministration, cheating, and extor- 
tions which prevailed throughout the Roman Empire were 
felt in Judaea with peculiar keenness. The tax-farmers — 
usually Roman knights, who, singly or in companies, pur- 
chased from the government the proceeds of a tax, and then 
proceeded to make as much as they could out of it — were 
universally regarded even by Pagans with a mixture of dis- 
like and contempt.f Suetonius, in his “ Life of Vespasian,” 
records that the Emperor’s father, whose name was Sabinus, 
actually had a statue raised to him by several cities as that 
astonishingly exceptional personage, “ an excellent publi- 
can J and, in answer to the question, “ Which are the 

* Their name became proverbial (Matt, xviii. 17). 

f Cic. De Off. i. 42. Lucian ( Menipp . ii.) classes them among the worst 
criminals. See Ep. Barncib. 4 ; Celsus ap. Orig. ii. 46 ; Keim iii. 267 ; Light- 
foot, Hor. Hebr. on Matt, xviii. 17 ; Cave, Lives of the Apostles ; Hamburger 
Realworterb. ii. 1310. 

f Suet, Vesp. i., /ca/lw? TzkuvrjGavTi. Josephus mentions one respectable publi- 
can ( B . J. ii. 14, 4)- 


26 2 


THE LIFE OF LIVES. 


worst of wild beasts?” Theocritus answers, “ On the moun- 
tains, bears and lions : in the cities, publicans and pettifog- 
gers.” Suidas describes the life of a publican as “Unre- 
strained plunder, unblushing greed, unreasonable pettifog- 
ging, shameless business.” Among the Jews, who made it 
a question of conscience whether under any circumstances 
it was lawful to pay tribute to Caesar, these feelings were 
intensified. In A. D. 17 Roman taxation had caused the 
insurrection of Judas the Gaulonite, whose motto was, “ No- 
Lord but Jehovah; no tax but to the Temple.” Judaea 
seethed with chronic disaffection. The Jews were con- 
fronted on every side with the irritating worry of oppres- 
sive demands and illegal extortion. There was the poll-tax, 
and the land-tax, which demanded a tenth of the corn and 
a fifth of the produce of vineyards and fruit trees ; and there 
were endless tolls on the most necessary wares relentlessly 
exacted at frontiers, at ferries, at bridges, in markets, and 
on roads, of which no small part went, as the cost of adminis- 
tiation, not to the State at all, but to the wealthy and 
greedy publican. The system was radically bad. It put a 
premium on dishonesty. The State got the sum it wanted 
from the men who farmed the tax, and was selfishly 
indifferent to the methods which they and their agents 
adopted. 

The consequence was, in many provinces, an amount of 
misery and bankruptcy analogous to that created by the 
same vile methods in the Turkish Empire. The Roman 
knights and Company-Directors ( Publicani , Mancipes) * 
necessarily required an army of subordinate agents ( socii ) ; 
and in addition to their own exorbitant demands — for which 
they had established a sort of official impunity — the rapacity 
of these underlings had to be sated, and was kept in very 
inefficient check. If the upper publicani were hated, how~ 
much more was this the case with the portitores or exactors , 
to whom fell the daily disagreeable task of enforcing the 
*Cic. Pro Plancio , ix. * 


THE TITLES OF JESUS. 263 

payment which gorged their own avarice as well as that of 
their masters ! That a Jew should accept such a post for 
the sake of filthy lucre, or even to get a bare living, placed 
him beneath the reach of the utmost capacity for disdain in 
the hearts of his stricter countrymen ; and this spirit of de- 
testation for these lower officials was exacerbated by daily 
scorn and ingenious annoyances. They, and all things that 
belonged to them, were regarded as hopelessly unclean, and 
as a source of pollution which any number of purifications 
could hardly clear away. Now when a class is thus 
radically despised it is apt to become despicable, and to 
defy contempt by ostentatious vileness. Hence “pub- 
licans” — by which in the Gospel is meant these inferior 
portitores — are classed with sinners, harlots, thieves, and 
murderers. They were the worst pariahs of the Holy Land, 
whose very existence was regarded as offensive, whose hand 
was against every man, and every man’s hand against them. 
The ordinary tax-collector (Gabbai) was hated and scorned, 
but the toll-collector {Mokes) was still more an object of 
execration.* 

How deeply seated, then, was the amazement at, and 
how strong the indignation against, the Son of Man, 
w hen — sent as He was to seek and save those that were 
lost — He deliberately chose one of these subordinate tax- 
gathers — not even a Gabbai , but a Mokes — to be one of 
His Chosen Twelve Apostles ; took him from “the place of 
toll,” and sat down at his farewell banquet with other pub- 
licans and sinners! Many loudly murmured at His con- 
descending love.f “ With arid heart,” says St. Gregory the 
Great, “they blamed the very Fount of Mercy.” In all 
ages it has been the fault of such religionists that “ they 
sought not the lost.”:J: 

Yet Christ’s action was part of a distinct purpose. He 

*See Hamburger, Realworterb. ii. 1-10 ; Buxtorf, Lex. s. v ., D 2 I 3 . 

f Luke xv. 2, dieydyyvfyv. 

\ Ezek. xxxiv. 4. 


264 


THE LIFE OF LIVES. 


held up the humility of the penitent publican who smote 
on his breast with the cry of “God be merciful to me the 
sinner,” as an example to the posing Pharisee, who bragged 
of his immaculate superiority rather than prayed for 
needed pardon. 

(v.) Again, throughout the East generally the position 
of woman is more or less despised and down-trodden, so 
that in some Eastern countries it was a common prayer,. 
“ O God, let not my infant be a girl ; for very wretched is 
the life of women.”* * * § Their position in Judaea was not 
quite so low, yet a Pharisee thought it a disgrace to speak 
to a woman in public, even if the woman was his own 
wife.f The Apostles were so much infected with this 
current spirit of fancied superiority that they were amazed 
when they saw Jesus talking “ with a zvoman ! ” J But He 
always displayed towards all women the same fine respect 
and tenderness. Ministering women — Salome, and Mary 
the wife of Cleopas, and Joanna the wife of Chuzas, 
Herod’s steward, and the Magdalene, out of whom He had 
cast seven devils — followed His wanderings, and ministered 
to Him of their substance. When a poor woman stole 
from Him a work of mercy, by secretly touching the hem 
of His garment among the throng, and thus communicating 
to Him her ceremonial uncleanness, so far from sternly 
rebuking her trembling presumption, He said, “ Daughter, 
be of good cheer, thy faith hath saved thee.” § 

Nay, more even than this, He did not repulse the 


* Happy he whose children are boys, and woe unto him whose children are 
girls,” Kiddushin, f. 82, 2. See Hershon, Gen. acc. to the Talmud , p. 168. 

fjose ben Jochanan of Jerusalem, “Prolong not converse with woman,” 
Pirqe AvSth, 1, 5. There is a better view in Bereshith Rabbah, viii. But 
according to Dr. Frankl, Jews in the East , ii. 81, the Pharisaic Chakams to 
this day are specially careful to avoid being touched by any part of a woman’s 
dress. 

X John iv. 27. To talk with a woman in public was one of the six things 
which a Rabbi might not do. Berachoth, f. 42, 2. 

§ Matt. ix. 22. 


THE TITLES OF JESUS. 265 

“ woman who was a sinner,” whom Simon the Pharisee 
eyed with such supercilious disgust, regarding it as a proof 
that Jesus was no Prophet since not repulsing her stained 
touch, He suffered her to kiss His feet, and wet them with 
her tears, and wipe them with the hairs of her head. But 
Jesus calmly rebuked the Pharisee by a parable, and saved 
the soul of the sinner by compassion. 

“ She sat and wept beside His feet ; the weight 
Of sin oppressed her heart ; for all the shame, 

And the poor malice of the worldly blame, 

For her were past, extinct, and out of date. 

She would be melted by the heat of love — 

By fires far fiercer than are blown to prove, 

And purge the silver ore adulterate. 

She sat and wept, and with her untressed hair 
Still wiped the feet she was so blessed to touch : 

And He wiped off the soiling of despair 

From her sweet soul, because she loved so much.” 

Nay, even when the Scribes brought to Him a woman 
taken in adultery, hoping either to get Him into trouble 
with the Romans by condemning her to death by stoning, 
or to give them an excuse for accusing Him of violation of 
the Mosaic Law, He defeated their base plot by sending 
the arrow of conviction into their own hardened con- 
sciences. When, self-convicted, they had stolen away, and 
He raised His eyes from the ground — to which He had 
bent them in an intolerable sense of shamed indignation at 
their coarse cruelty — and found Himself standing there 
alone, with the guilty woman before Him, He only said to 
her, “Woman, where are they? Did no man condemn 
thee? Neither do I condemn thee. Go thy way; from 
henceforth sin no more.”* 

(vi.) The Jews did not indeed despise little children, but, 
like all ancient nations, they left them all but exclusively to 

. *John viii. 11. Though this narrative was not in the original Gospel of St. 
John, the incident is undoubtedly a real one. 


266 


THE LIFE OF LIVES. 


the charge of women, repressed them, kept them in the 
background, did little or nothing to mould their infant 
years. When the eager, loving mothers brought their 
children to Christ that He should bless them, the disciples 
were impatient at what they regarded as feminine intrusive- 
ness, and rebuked those that brought them.* * * § But Jesus 
was more than usually displeased f at this lack of sympathy. 
He took the little ones in His arms, laid His hands upon 
them, and blessed them, and said, “ Suffer the little children 
to come unto Me, and forbid them not, for of such is the 
Kingdom of Heaven.” He held up for an example their 
gentle innocence and blameless receptivity. J He had 
watched with a loving eye their little games in the market- 
place, as they amused themselves by playing at marriages 
or funerals. § Home, with its commonest incidents, was to 
Him an infinitely sacred place. When the mothers brought 
to Him, not only their little children, but “ even their 
babes,” \ He did not disdain to take in His arms their 
helpless infancy, and more than once He rebuked the 
ambitious selfishness of the disciples in their disputes as to 
which was the greater of them T by taking a little child, 
setting him in the midst of them, and bidding them take 
example from his humble innocence.** As the poet 
describes it : 

“ The twelve disputing who was first and chief, 

He took a little child, knit holy arms 

Round the brown, flower-soft boy, and smiled and said, 

‘ Here is the first and chiefest ! If a man 

* Matt, xviii. 1-6, 10-14, xix. 13-18 ; Mark ix. 36, x. 13-16 ; Luke 
xviii. 17-18. 

f rjyavaiTTjae. The word is only used once of Jesus (Mark x. 14). 

X Matt, xviii. 2. 

§ Matt. xi. 17 ; Luke vii. 32. 

|| Luke xviii. 15 , rd ^pe<j>T]. 

IT Not “ which should be the greatest,” but “ which of them is accounted to 
be greatest,” R. V. (Luke xxii. 24), or “ who was the greater ” (Mark ix. 34). 

** Luke xviii. 17 ; Matt, xviii. 1-4. 


THE TITLES OF JESUS. 267 

Will be the greatest, see he make himself 
Lowest and least, a servant unto all ; 

Meek as my small disciple here, who asks 
No place nor praise, but takes unquestioning 
Love, as the river-lilies take the sun, 

And pays it back with rosy folded palms 
Clasped round My neck, and simple head reclined 
On his Friend’s breast.’ ” 

Thus, by all His words and works did Jesus show that 
He came to be the representative of Humanity, to save the 
most fallen, to rescue the most miserable, to inspire the 
most hopeless, to reverence the very weakest, and as the 
Son of Man to bring home to every soul the revelation 
which He came to impart as the Son of God. Nor ought 
we to ignore, as is almost habitually done, the fact that 
our Lord’s promises are often unlimited in scope. Thus, 
He said that “God sent not His son into the world to 
condemn the world, but that the world through Him 
might be saved.” And He said, “ I, if I be lifted up, will 
draw all men unto Me ; ” and He came to be “ the Saviour 
of the world ” and “ the Lamb of God which taketh away 
the sins of the world.” “ The sad realities of present 
experience,” says Bishop Westcott, “cannot change the 
truth thus made known, however little we may be able to 
•understand the way in which it will be accomplished.” 

It must not be for a moment supposed that the Divine 
claims were veiled under the title of “ The Son of Man ” ; 
for our Lord not unfrequently used, and allowed others to 
use, the title of “ The Son ” in a pre-eminent sense, as the 
Son of the Almighty Father. In St. Mark, indeed, it only 
occurs in xiii. 32; and in the other synoptic Gospels only 
in Matt. xi. 27, Luke x. 22 ; but it is found twenty-two 
times, and always in the highest sense and with the most 
Eternal claims, in the Gospel of St. John. And in the 
synoptic Gospels, where the title is not directly used, it is 
constantly referred to and implied. Christ spoke of God 


268 


THE LIFE OF LIVES. 


the Father as in a very unique sense His Father. Again 
and again he speaks of My heavenly Father,* in a sense 
different from and higher than the phrase your Father, 
which was also frequently upon His.lips.f Stupendous, 
indeed, was the revelation that He, the persecuted peasant- 
teacher of Nazareth, was not only “a Son of God ” — as, in 
one sense, all men are — but “ the Son of God.” Yet, amid 
all His humiliations, at the apparent nadir of His earthly 
rejection and defeat, this truth — such was the power of His 
daily presence and influence — burnt itself deeply into the 
hearts of His poor Apostles. It forced from the lips of 
Peter the great confession, “ Thou art the Christ , the Son of 
the Living God." \ That acknowledgment was the crown- 
ing crisis of Christ’s earthly ministry. It proved that His 
essential work was now accomplished. And as Keim 
strikingly observes, “We do not know which first to 
designate great, whether this lofty flight of the disciples 
who renounce the Jewish standard, quash the verdict of 
the hierarchs, leap over the popular opinion which hung: 
midway between the two extremes, find loftiness and 
Divinity in the downtrodden and insignificant, because, 
spiritually to spiritual eyes, it remains something Divine ; 
or, that Personality of Jesus which compels such weak 
disciples, even under the paralysing influence of all external 
facts, distinctly and simply and nobly to mirror back the 
total impression of His Ministry.” § 

* Matt. vii. 21 ; xii. 50 ; xv. 13 ; xvii. 35, xviii. 10, 35, etc. 

+ Matt. x. 20, xvii. 26, xviii. 14, xxiii. 9, etc. In the sentence, “ I ascend 
unto my Father and your Father” (John xx. 17), the Greek is npog rov narepa 
pov Kal Trarepa vpov, “The Father of me and Father of you.” Comp. Heb_ 
ii. n ; Rom. iii. 29, xv. 6. 

X Matt. xvi. 16. 

§ Keim, iv. 263. 


CHAPTER XXV. 


CHRIST’S CONDEMNATION OF PHARISAIC RELIGIONISM. 

“ There is a generation that are pure in their own eyes, and yet are 
not washed from their filthiness.” — Prov. xxx. 12. 

“ Which say, ‘ Stand by thyself; come not near to me, for I am holier 
than thou /’ These are a smoke in my nose, a fire that burneth all the 
day.” — Is. lxv. 5. 

“ Beggarly elements.” — Gal. iv. 9. 

’An epavTo?i.oyia. — ORIGEN, Off. i. 1 1 9. 

“ Stupenda inanitas et yafrities.” — LlGHTFOOT, Ded. in Hot. Hebr. 

ALREADY in a previous chapter we have seen something 
of the wretched series of minutiae into which the Pharisees 
had degraded the Levitic System, though that system con- 
sisted, as St. Paul says, of “ weak and beggarly rudiments,” 
and was nothing more than “ a yoke of bondage,” necessi- 
tated by ignorance and hardness of heart.* The funda- 
mental differences between the religion of the letter and of 
the spirit, between the righteousness of the law and “ the 
righteousness which is through faith in Christ,” f will be 
found summarily described in the answer of Christ to the 
Scribes and Pharisees from Jerusalem, who came to act as 
spies upon His ministry. $ 

The Pharisees were the only body of the Jewish people 
with whom Christ entered into a position of direct antago- 
nism, forced upon Him by their subterranean baseness, as 
well as by the paltriness of their conceptions and the arro- 
gance which resulted from their fundamental misapprehen- 
sion of what is and is not truly sacred in the eyes of God. 

* Gal. iv. 9, v. 1. f See Phil. iii. 9. 

\ Matt. xv. 1-20 ; Mark vii. 1-23. 

269 


THE LIFE OF LIVES. 


270 

Their system was an elaborate “ externalization of holi- 
ness ” ; His teaching was that “ God is a Spirit, and they 
that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth.” 
It was the main object of the Lord of Life to bring to 
erring . men that true life which they can only acquire by 
union with God. Formalities of every kind, will-worship, 
even severities of the body, are easy ; but, as St. Paul so 
emphatically says, they are of no value against the indul- 
gence of the flesh.* It is easy to bow the head like a bul- 
rush, but not easy to offer from the depths of a penitent 
heart the prayer of the Publican, “ God be merciful to me, 
the sinner.” The Pharisees called their Rabbis “ Uprooters 
of Mountains,” “ Lights of Israel,” “ Glories of the Law,” 
“ The Great,” “The Holy,” but the mass of the people 
were in their eyes mere boors, “empty wells,” “people of 
the earth,” “ who knew not the Law and were accursed.” f 
Yet “ the boldest religionists and mock-prophets,” says 
Henry More,:): “are very full of heat and spirits; and have 
their imagination too often infected with the fumes of 
those lower parts, the full sense and pleasure whereof 
they prefer before all the subtle delights of reason and 
generous contemplation.” 

Always kind, always courteous, always forbearing even 
towards meddling spies — ready to meet their quibbles, 
ready to answer their questions, ready to accept their super- 
cilious hospitality, ready with the most gracious courtesy 
to meet their hard and calumnious criticisms — Jesus was 
compelled at last “ to break into plain thunderings and 
lightnings ” against them, in order to strip bare their hypoc- 
risies, and to blight the influence they exerted over hosts of 

*Col. ii. 23. 

f In Lukexviii. 10-12, we read the brag of the posing Pharisee, and it is 
exactly analogous to a prayer of R. Nechounia ben Hakana in Berachoth (see 
Schwab, p. 336). But 

“ Humble we must be if to heaven we go ; 

High is the roof there, but the gate is low.” 

% Conjcct. Cabbalist. , p. 231. 


PHARISAIC RELIGIONISM. 


271 


deluded followers and proselytes, whom, to use His own 
terrible expression, they “ made tenfold more the children 
of Gehenna than themselves.”* He could not reveal to the 
world the unchangeable truths which constitute the Alpha 
and Omega of genuine holiness, without showing how mean 
a parody was substituted for it by these “shallow and sel- 
fish men, bigots in creed and in conduct, capable of no sin 
disapproved by tradition, incapable of any virtue unenjoined 
by it ; too respectable to be publicans and sinners, but at 
once too ungenerous to forgive any sin against their own 
order, and too blind to see the sins within it ; who remain 
for all time our most perfect types of fierce and inflexible 
devotion to a worship instituted and administered by man, 
but of relentless and unbending antagonism to religion, as 
the service of God in spirit and in truth.” f 

The Pharisees were the Tartuffes of ancient days. The 
Gospel system could not be established without the over- 
throw of that which had become the corporate expression 
o' the cardinal sin of Judaism, the corruption of man’s wor- 
ship of God to a mere outward service by acts formal and 
artificial, through instruments and articles sensuous, exter- 
nal, purchasable. $ Shammai, the rival of Hillel, was a 
luxurious and selfish man ; yet so particular was he about 
senseless scrupulosities that he almost starved his little son 
on the Day of Atonement, and made a booth over the child- 
bed of his daughter-in-law that his first-born grandson might 
keep the Feast of Tabernacles ! § If they had understood 
the most elementary teaching of the Psalms, || the Proph- 
ets, T and even of their own Law,** they would not have 

* Matt, xxiii. 15. t Fairbairn. 

X Jost., Gesch. d. Juden. iv. 76 ; Gfrorer, Jahrh. d. Heils , i. 140 ; Lightfoot, 
Hor. Hebr. on Matt. iii. 17. 

§ Succah. ii. 9. 

|| Ps. vii. 10, xxiv. 4, 1 . 8, li. 12, 18, cxxxix. 23. 

If Is. i. 10, Iviii. 1, lxvi. 1; Jer. vi. 20, vii. 21, xvii. 10, xxxi. 32 ; Mic. vi. 6; 
Amos v. 21 ; 1 Sam. xvi. 7. 

** Deut. vi. 5. 


272 


THE LIFE OF LIVES. 


elaborated their eye-service of men-pleasers which usurped 
the place of that singleness of heart without which forms 
and ceremonies are but as a booming gong or a clanging 
cymbal. They ordained rites which corresponded to noth- 
ing, and made their scrupulosities a cloak of maliciousness. 
Christ extended the Decalogue itself to the thoughts of the 
heart, and summed up all the Commandments in the Law 
of Love. And in point of fact this was not in disaccord 
with their own best teaching in their saner moments, for we 
read in Soteh (p. 14, 1), “The beginning of the Law is 
benevolence, and in benevolence it ends. At the begin- 
ning God clothed the naked (Gen. iii. 21), at the end He 
buried the dead (Deut. xxxiv. 5, 6).” 

What was the so-called Oral Law which the Pharisees so 
extravagantly valued ? The first sentence of the Pirqe 
Avdth tells us how Moses received the Thorah from God on 
Mount Sinai, and that through Joshua, the Elders, and the 
Prophets it was transmitted to the men of the Great Syna- 
gogue, who, in accordance with the literal translation of 
Lev. xviii. 30 (“ make a Mishmereth to my Mishmereth ”) 
handed it down as a duty to “ make a fence to the Thorah ” 
( seyyag la-ThoraJi). The Rabbis held that Moses received 
two Laws on Sinai, both the Written ( Thorah Shebektab ) 
and the Oral Law ( Thorah shebeal Peh ) — “ the law on the 
lip.” * Hence they described the Mishnah as “ the 
Halachah ” (or “Rule”) given to Moses on Sinai; and 
Rabbi Simon Ben Lakdeh assigned a Mosaic origin even to 
the Gemara,f including Halachoth, Haggadoth, and Mid- 
rashim.J Nay, they exalted their tradition above the writ- 

* The phrase is borrowed from Ex. xxxiv. 27, where al Peh is rendered 
“ after the tenor.” 

f Gittin, f. 6, 2 ; Hershon, Taint. Miscell p. xv. On the great synagogue, 
see Taylor’s Pirqe Avdth , pp. 125, 126. 

\ This they deduced in their own way from Mich. ii. 6, 7. In Baba Metzia 
(86a) God summons Rabbi Bar-Nachman to settle a controversy which has 
arisen between Him and the angels. Comp. f. 59, 6 ; Shemoth Rabbah , ch. 
clvii.; Berachoth } i. 7. 


PHARISAIC RELIGIONISM. 


2 73 


ten Law, and said, “ The words of the Scribes are more 
noble than the words of the Law.” In the Baba Metzia 
we are told that to read the Mishnah and Gemara is far 
more meritorious than to read the words of Scripture. 
“The sayings of the elders,” they said, “are weightier than 
those of the Prophets.” * Not to read the Shema, accord- 
ing to Rabbi Abba Bar-Eshera, in the name of Rabbi 
Judah Bar-Pari, deserves but a slight punishment, for it 
only breaks an affirmative precept ; but not to read it 
according to the rule of Hillel deserves capital punish- 
ment, for “ whoso breaketh a hedge (the Seyyag la-TJiorah) 
a serpent shall bite him”! (Eccl. x. 8). If a man’s father 
and his Rabbi are carrying burdens, he is to lighten the 
Rabbi first. If both are in captivity he must first ransom 
his Rabbi. f Pride went hand in hand with littleness. 
They loved the chief seats in synagogues and the upper- 
most place at feasts, and greetings in the market places, 
and to be called of men, Rabbi, Rabbi. Modern criticism 
has proved it to be at least possible that much of the 
Levitic system did not assume its present form until after 
the Exile. The futile elaborations of this Levitism — 
imperfect and secondary as it was — had their origin in the 
endeavour to separate Israel from all contact with the 
nations by a network of traditions. The Scribes had 
developed it into a sort of abracadabra without limit and 
without end. “ The whole history of religion proves that 
a ceremony- and tradition-ridden time is infallibly a 
morally corrupt time — artificial ceremonies, whether origin- 
ating with Jewish Rabbis or Christian ‘priests,’ are of no 
spiritual value. Recommended by their zealous advocates, 
often sincerely, as tending to promote the culture of 
morality and piety, they often prove fatal to both. Well 
are they called in the Epistle to the Hebrews ‘ dead works.’ 
If they have any life at all, it is life feeding upon death, the 

* See Schiirer II. i. 3. 

\ Avdth iv. 12 ; Kerithoth , vi. 9. See Schurer II. i. 3. 


274 


THE LIFE OF LIVES. 


life of fungi growing on dead trees ; if they have any 
beauty, it is the beauty of decay, of autumnal leaves, sere 
and yellow . . . when the woods are about to pass into 
their winter state of nakedness.” * 

Let us see how Jesus dealt with this state of things in 
separate instances. 

(i.) The Oral Law attached immense importance to the 
ceremonial purifications , which occupy no less. than twelve 
treatises of the sixth Seder of the Mishnah* including 
Yadaim or “ Handwashings,” and Migvaoth , “ the water 
used for baths and ablutions, and for the stalks of fruit 
which convey uncleanness.” f 

Our Lord said to the Pharisees, “ Now do ye Pharisees 
cleanse the outside of the cup and of the platter, but your 
inward part is full of extortion and wickedness.” \\ or, as it 
is in St. Matthew, “ but within they are full from extortion 
and excess.” § The Pharisaic rules about the washing of 
“ cups and platters ” were ludicrously minute. In the 
treatise Kelim we read that the air in hollow earthen ves- 
sels, like the hollow of the foot, contracts and propagates 
uncleanness, so that they must be broken, and if a piece be 
left large enough to anoint the little toe with, it is still “ a 
vessel,” and therefore capable of defilement. They are to 
be accounted as “ broken ” if there be a hole in them as 
large as a medium-sized pomegranate! Hillel caused end- 
less trouble throughout the Dispersion by deciding, in 
accordance with the rule of Joseph Ben Jezzer and Joseph 
Ben Johanan, that even glass vessels were capable of con- 
veying defilement. This legalised and intentional unsoci- 

* See Bruce, Training of the Twelve , p. 82. 

t See Winer, s. v. Reinigkeit ; Herzog, s. v. Reinigungen ; Schurer II. ii. 
§28. 

\ Luke xi. 39. 

§ Matt, xxiii. 25. St. Mark (vii. 4) speaks also of the washing of pots, and 
brazen vessels, and tables, or couches. As to the latter we read in Kelim that 
if one or two of the legs of a three-legged table are broken it is clean, but if: 
the third foot is gone, it becomes a board, and is susceptible of defilement. 


PHARISAIC RELIGIONISM. 


275 


ability (Perishooth, ajxigla) did infinite harm to the Jews 
and prevented them from fulfilling the Divine mission 
which they might otherwise have accomplished for the 
ennoblement of the world.* Such puerilities could only 
excite contempt in any healthy mind. 

Again, as we know, the Jerusalemite spies, Scribes and 
Pharisees, had seen some of the disciples “ eat bread with 
defiled (lit. common), that is , unwashen hands," whereas 
they themselves, following the tradition of the Elders,, 
washed their hands 7 tvyjurj (diligently ?), which is by some 
interpreted to mean “ up to the elbow,” or “with the fist,” 
and by others “ up to the wrist.” f The rule given in the 
Talmudic book Soteh (f. 4, 6) is that “ He who eats bread 
without having first washed his hands, commits as it were 
fornication.” According to Shabbath (f. 14, 2) a Bath Kol, 
or voice from heaven, had pronounced Solomon blessed 
when he instituted the laws respecting hand-washings ; and 
when a man washes his hands he is to first wash the right 
hand, then the left, whereas in anointing the hands he is 
first to anoint the left hand, then the right.;); “ If a man 
poured on one hand one gush his hand is clean ; but if one 
gush on both hands R. Meir pronounces them unclean, 
until one poured out a quarter log of water upon them.” § 
Moreover the scribes said it were better to cut off the 
hands than to touch the nose, mouth, and ears with them 
without having first washed them, as this causes blind- 
ness, deafness, foul breath, and polypus. According to R. 

* See many more of these paltry minutiae in Schurer, /. c. 

f Heb. PT?'? ’ Mark vii. 3. See Lightfoot on Matt. xvi. 2 ; Hamburger,, 
Real. Ency. Handewaschen. The word 7r vy/iy probably refers to the rule that 
the hand was to be held up, with closed fist, so that the water poured on it 
streamed down to the elbow. There were additional rules as to the sort of 
water to be used, from what vessel it was to be poured, who was to pour it, 
etc. Vulg. , crebro. Epiphanius ( Hcer . 15) hrijue^ug, “carefully.” Erasmus 
suggested a reading nvKvy. The reading of K is ttvkvcl. The word occurs in 
the LXX.; Ex. xxi. 18 ; Is. lviii. 4. 

X Shabbath , f. 61, 1. 


§ Yadayim , ch. 2, 1. 


THE LIFE OF LIVES. 


276 

Nathan an evil spirit named Bath Chorin haunts the 
hands at night, and only departs if they are washed three 
times ! * Akiba preferred to die of thirst rather than not 
wash his hands. The treatise Yadayim , in four chapters, is 
mainly devoted to this subject. According to another 
treatise — the Kitzur Stilah — a man who does not wash his 
hands before eating will have as little rest as a murderer, 
and will be transmigrated into a cataract ; and in this 
treatise we are taught that the proper way to wash the 
hands is to stretch out the fingers, turning the palms 
upwards, and say “Lift ye up your holy hands. ”f Fur- 
ther, every one should have a vessel of water by his bed, 
and if he walks four ells without washing his hands after 
getting up “ he has forfeited his life as a Divine punish- 
ment. Most truly may it be said of the Rabbinic writ- 
ings, as Lightfoot says of them, “ Nugis ubique scatent." 

It should be observed that the question was not in the 
least a question of health or cleanliness, but only of imagi- 
nary and incidental defilements ; and our Lord swept aside 
this whole mass of contemptible traditions in the one 
sentence, “ to eat with unwashen hands defileth not a man." 
Between Christ’s teaching of spiritual simplicity and the 
boundless i^eXonepiGGo^prjGKeia (as Epiphanius admirably 
calls it) of the Pharisees, there could be no middle term.§ 
(ii.) Again, the Scribes and Pharisees had developed 
from the Levitic law reams of inferential littlenesses about 
the distinction between clean and unclean meats. Accord- 
ing to the Mishnah, God, in giving the law to Moses, had 
assigned forty-nine reasons in every case for pronouncing 
one thing unclean and another clean. || Seven hundred 
kinds of fish and twenty-four kinds of birds were pro- 
nounced unclean. Our Lord made very short work of all 

* Yadayim , p. 109, I. ^ f Ps. cxxxiv. 2. 

X Kitzur Sh’lah, f. 43, 2. See Hershon, Talmudic Miscellany , p. 333. 

§ Hcer. xvi. 34 
| Sopherim, xvi. 6. 


PHARISAIC RELIGIONISM. 


2 77 


these laws of Kashar and Tame (which still prevail in Jewish 
communities)* * * § when he said, “That which proceedeth out 
of the man — out of the heart of men — that defileth the 
man . . . whatsoever from without goeth into the man 
cannot defile him.’' f This he said, making all meats clean. 
He bade the disciples simply to eat such things as were set 
before them,J just as St. Paul told his Gentile converts 
to eat whatsoever was sold in the shambles, “ asking no 
questions.” § 

(iii.) To fasting the Pharisees ascribed an exaggerated 
and most mistaken importance. The ninth treatise of 
the second Seder of the Mishnah is devoted to fasts. In 
the Levitic Law only one fast day was appointed in the 
whole year (Lev. xvi. 29) — the Kippur, or Day of Atone- 
ment.l By the time of Zechariah four yearly fasts had 
come into vogue (Zech. viii. 19), but the Prophet declared 
that they “ should be to the House of Judah joy, and glad- 
ness, and cheerful feasts,” and when he was consulted 
about them he in no way encouraged their observance 
(vii. 1-14), but, in their place, enforced the duties of mercy 
and compassion. Over and over again the great Prophets 
of Israel had taught the uselessness of a fasting which had 
not the least connection with goodness and charity.^ In 

*Jos.c. Ap. ii. 17; Ckullitt, f. 63, 2. One specimen of the littleness of 
their exegesis is shown in the prohibition to eat flesh and milk together because 
of the law, “ Thou shalt not seethe a kid in its mother’s milk ! ” 

f Mark vii. 18-23. 

% Luke x. 8. 

§ 1 Cor. x. 25. 

|| See, too, Numb. xxix. 7. The fact that this single fast and its ceremonies 
is never referred to elsewhere in the Old Testament — not even in such passages 
as Ezek. xl.-xlviii. and Neh. viii.-x., taken in connection with critical argu- 
ments, constituted a decisive proof that the Day of Atonement was a Post- 
•exilic ordinance. See Dr. Driver, s. v. Day of Atonement (Dr. Hastings’ 
Diet, of the Bible'). 

f Is. lviii. 3-6; Mic. vi. 6-8; Amos v. 21-24, etc. Even in the Megillath 
Taaniih, which emanated from the early Rabbinic School, there is only a list 
of days on which fasting is forbidden. Fasting was chiefly developed in the 


278 THE LIFE OF LIVES. 

the age of Christ the Pharisees had established two weekly- 
fasts, one on Thursday, when Moses was supposed to have 
ascended Sinai, and one on Monday, when he descended,* 
and they plumed themselves in a manner which the Lord 
heartily disapproved upon these empty observances^ 
They probably became mere sham functions, fasting of 
the effeminate amateur kind, in which case they were 
beneath contempt ; or if they were real fasts, they were 
a needless and injurious burden. The Scribes made them 
still more injurious by parading their sanctimoniousness 
and regarding it as a means for extorting Divine favours. 
But when, on one of these fast-days, they, with the dis- 
ciples of the Baptist, who in the imperfection of his views 
had adopted the practice, came to complain, in all the carp- 
ing fretfulness which fasting produces, f that neither our 
Lord nor His Apostles took the least notice of this “ tradi- 
tion of the Elders,” our Lord pointed out to them the only 
conditions under which fasting becomes natural — the con- 
ditions of overwhelming sorrow. He Himself “came eat- 
ing and drinking ” — that is, not depriving our human life 
of the necessary support and innocent enjoyments which 
God supplies and permits. This He did so openly as to 
give to those who thought it right “ to lie for God,” the 
excuse for the abhorrent calumny, “ Behold a gluttonous 
man and a wine-bibber.” His disciples, “ sons of the Bride- 
chamber,”^; could not fast while the Bridegroom was with 


Post-exilic age. It is absurdly magnified in the Book of Judith iv. 13, viii. 6, 
17-20. Comp. Tobit i. 10 ff. xii. 8. 

* Baba Kama , f. 82, 1. 

f Mark ii. 18, rjoav vj/orevovreg. “ The principle underlying this graphic rep- 
resentation is that fasting should not be a matter of fixed mechanical rule, but 
should have reference to the state of mind. . . Fasting under any other cir- 
cumstances is forced, unnatural, unreal. Bruce’s Training of the Twelve , 72. 
In the New Testament the words “ and fasting ” are an ascetic and Manicheani 
interpolation of Scribes in Matt. xvii. 21; Mark ix. 29; Acts x. 30; 1 Cor. 
vii. 5. 

X Beni habachunnah , the nearest friends of the wedded pair. 


PHARISAIC RELIGIONISM. 


279 

them, but should fast, not of necessity, but in heaviness of 
heart, when they had seen Him die on the Cross, and in the 
coming days of overwhelming persecution. To interpret 
■“ the days when the Bridegroom shall be taken away from 
them,” of the whole Christian Dispensation, and on that 
misinterpretation to found the false inference that Chris- 
tians ought continually to fast, is one of the most egre- 
gious of the many egregious blunders of ignorant will- 
worship. It ignores the innermost revelation of the 
Saviour that His physical absence was actually “ expedi- 
ent ” for His disciples, involving, as it did, the richer bless- 
ing of a closer spiritual nearness. Hence the character- 
istics of the early Christians were not gloomy anguish and 
morose asceticism, but, on the contrary, exultation and 
simplicity of heart.* 

(iv.) Again our Lord entirely discountenanced the whole 
method of Rabbinic exegesis with its “ ever-widening 
spiral ergo" drawn from the aperture of single texts. He 
never referred except with disdain to Halachoth, which 
were but masses of cobwebs spun out of their own fancy. 
He ignored the Midrash , which was far less an explanation 
of the Law and the Prophets than an inverted pyramid of 
distortions built on its isolated phrases. In Ps. lxii. 11 we 
read 

“ God hath spoken once ; 

Twice have I heard this ; ” 

and this was interpreted by Rabbi Akiba to mean “ God 
spake one thing ; what I heard is twofold,” which wrests 
the whole passage from its true meaning. This is in 
accordance with the common Rabbinic comment, “ Read 
not thus, but thus.” But our Lord’s comments are always 
on what the Bible means , not on those ingenious perver- 
sions of it for party purposes which constituted no small 

* Acts ii. 46, “Breaking bread at home, they did take their food ev 
dyaUidgei, “in exultation” (the strongest of all words for abounding joy) 
41 and simplicity of heart.” 


28 o 


THE LIFE OF LIVES. 


part of current exegesis. He held with the saner Rabbis 
that “ Scripture speaks in the tongue of the sons of men.”* 
Jesus charged the Scribes with deliberately setting at 
nought by their traditions the very Law round which, as 
the most sacred object of their lives, they professed it to 
be their duty to “make a hedge.” They explained it “ in 
as many ways as a hammer dashes a rock into fragments.”f 
He never referred to the “decision of the Scribes,” ;£ nor 
to the Kabbalistic mode of interpretation known as 
Geneth,$ nor to one of their unprofitably minute precepts. 
But He did upbraid them with their hypocrisy.! Thus by 
means of their Erubhin (or “mixtures”)^ they nullified 
some of the Mosaic laws which they professed most pro- 
foundly to respect,** so much so that in Menaclioth Moses 
himself is represented as standing amazed at the fatuous 
inferences established by R. Akiba from the horns and 
tips of letters.ff Well might Christ say to them, “ Ye 
search the Scriptures, because ye think that in them ye 
have eternal life, and those very Scriptures testify of Me 
yet ye will not come to Me that ye may have life.” 

For instance, the law of the Sabbatic year was regarded 
as fundamental. But as time went on, it was found to be 
very inconvenient for commerce, so Hillel got rid of it by 
a subterfuge called Prosbol , a preconcerted farce for the 

*Berach. 31, 2. f Sanhedrin , 34. 

% DnaiD nrr. 

§ Namely (1), Gematria (Geometria), inferences from the numerical value of 
the letters of words. (2) Notarikon , the deducing of sentences from the letters 
of words. (3) Themourah, the interchange of letters by Athbash, Albam* 
etc. Those who wish for further explanations may find them fully furnished 
in my papers on Rabbinic exegesis in The Expositor , vols. v., vi. (First Series). 

|| Mark vii. 5-13. 

TT In the first instance the word seems to be used for “ the binding together 
of several localities,” in order to get rid of the supposed law that they might 
not walk more than 2000 ells on the Sabbath. ^ 

**Weil, Le Judaisme , iii. 268. 

ff Vajikra Rabba, f. 162, I. Quoted by Schottgen on Matt. xv. 18. 

XX John v. 39, 40. 


PHARISAIC RELIGIONISM. 


281 


evasion of the law, by which the creditor said to the 
debtor, “ This being the Sabbatic year I release you from 
your debt," and the debtor replied (as had been pre- 
arranged), “ Many thanks , but I prefer to pay it ! " Thus 
did they honour God with their lips, but denied Him in 
their double heart. Long prayers, and devouring of 
widows’ houses; flaming proselytism and subsequent 
moral neglect ; rigorous stickling for the letter, bound- 
less levity as to the spirit ; high-sounding words as to the 
sanctity of oaths, and cunning reservations of casuistry ; 
fidelity in trifles, gross neglect of essential principles ; the 
mask of godliness without the reality ; petty orthodoxy 
and artificial morals — such was Pharisaism. It was a false 
system, based on egotism and self-seeking ; a semblable 
goodness swayed by “a tame conscience,” which had no 
power over the heart.* And that was why the Pharisees 
were “ the only class which Jesus cared publicly to expose.” 

* See Canon Mozley, Univ. Sermons , pp. 28-51. 


CHAPTER XXVI. 


CHRIST AND THE SABBATH. 

It was as regards the non-observance of the traditions of 
the Elders about the Sabbath that the Pharisees raised the 
fiercest clamour against Christ. They had established a 
number of arbitrary rules, whereas the principle and the 
practice of Christ was that of the olden Law, that “ the 
Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath.” 
The Sabbath of the “Book of the Covenant” had been 
greatly altered in the later priestly laws.* No one on that 
day was to walk more than 2000 yards, because, in 
Ex. xvi. 29, a Jew is forbidden “to go out of his place” 
{Makom), but, in Ex. xxi. 13, the homicide may fly to the 
Levitic suburb, which was 2000 yards from the camp ; 
hence, by one of Hillel’s Middot h (known as “analogy”), 
every one might walk 2000 yards on the Sabbath.f But 
supposing a Pharisee wanted to dine with another on the 
Sabbath, was he to forego his pleasure on this account ? 
Oh, no ! By putting up sham lintels and doorposts, the 
whole street, even if it were miles long, becomes a part of 
their own house ! $ And no man might carry anything 
more than four ells on a Sabbath; but at the end of the 
four ells he might hand it to another and he to another, 
and so get it conveyed a hundred miles if necessary. 

Again, no man might buy anything on the Sabbath, but 
he might go to a shopkeeper and say, “Give me this or 
that,” and call and pay for it next day. No Jew might 

* See Montefiore, Hibbert Lectures , p. 338. 

\ Rosh Hashanah , f. 21 ; 2 Erubhin , f. 42, 1. 

\ This particular evasion was called the Erubh. Techumim. See Maimoni- 
•des, Hilchoth Erubhin , vi. 6 ; Montefiore, Hibbert Lectures, p. 562. 

282 


CHRIST AND THE SABBATH. 283 

carry any burden on the Sabbath, however small, not even 
a pocket-handkerchief ; but he might tie a pocket-hand- 
kerchief round his knee, and regard it as a garter ! This 
a7tef)avroXoyia , as Origen calls it, has lasted for ages, for 
even in the third century the Jews had decided that on 
the Sabbath a man might wear one kind of shoe, but not 
another.* Our Lord denounces such mean modes of trying 
to deceive God, in the matter of the Corban, in the rule 
about hating enemies, and on the subject of divorce. He 
taught on the principle that Scripture does not cover any 
number of inferences which can be extorted out of isolated 
expressions, but that we are to abide by all that is perma- 
nent in the plain meaning of Holy Writ. Scripture is what 
Scripture means. To quote a phrase, and attribute to its 
literal significance a meaning which it never had, and never 
could have had, is a mere trick of ignorant hypocrisy. 

We read in the Book of Jubilees (50), “Every one who 
desecrates the Sabbath, or declares that he intends to 
make a journey on it, or speaks either of buying or selling, 
or he who draws water and has not provided it upon the 
sixth day, and he who lifts a burden in order to take it out 
of his dwelling-place, or out of his house, shall die. And 
every man who makes a journey, or attends to his cattle, \ 
and he who kindles a fire, or rides upon any beast, or sails 
upon a ship on the sea upon the Sabbath day, shall die.” 
The rules about the Sabbath were divided into Avdth, 
“ fathers,” \ and Toldoth, “ generations ” — i. e., primary and 
derivative rules. 

The Avoth were thirty-nine in number, § and they for- 
bade all such works as sowing, ploughing, reaping, binding 

*Orig. Opp. i. 179- The Sabbatic fanaticism of the Jews attracted the notice 
■of Pagans. Ovid, Ars A mat. i. 415 ; Juv. Sat. xiv. 98-100. 

\ Some Rabbis who “bound” with Shammai, rather than “loosed” with 
Hillel, had decided that if a sheep fell into a water-tank on the Sabbath it was 
not to be drawn out. See Hausrath i. 95. 

X a,pxV 7 LK ^ TaTa °^Tia. Philo, De Vit. 686. 

§ Shabbath , f. 78, I. 


284 


THE LIFE OF LIVES. 


sheaves, threshing, etc. To these rules the Pharisees of 
Christ’s day seem to have added another, that no one was 
to be healed on a Sabbath day, so little did they recognise 
in their blindness that charity is above rubrics, and mercy 
better than sacrifice. Now, our Lord, in order to combat 
this folly, performed no less than seven miraculous healings 
on the Sabbath Day. To refute their fanatical formalism 
He appealed not only to His inherent authority as “Lord 
of the Sabbath” (Mark ii. 28; John v. 17-47), but also to 
Scripture precedents (Luke vi. 3-5), as well as to common 
sense and to eternal principles (vi. 9). Sometimes, too, He 
used, with crushing force, the argumentum ad hominem T 
showing the selfish insincerity with which they applied and 
modified their own regulations. 

The rules of the Rabbis were so minute in what Origen 
calls their “ frigid traditions ” that you might put wine on 
the eyelid on the “ Sabbath,” but not into the eye, because 
that is healing ; * and you might put vinegar into your 
mouth for a toothache, but might not rinse the mouth with 
it! Yet our Lord never violated even their best princi- 
ples : — for they said, “ The Sabbath may be broken when 
life is in danger — a child, for instance, may be saved from 
drowning.”f They distinguished, however, between saving; 
life and doing any other work of mercy ; for instance, if a 
woman has a toothache she may keep a piece of salt in her 
mouth, but only on condition that she has put it in the day 
before ! ^ “In no case was this miserable micrology carried 
to greater lengths.” 

Our Lord wished to restore the two divine principles that 
God loves mercy rather than sacrifice ; and that God de- 
sires our service solely because He desires that we should 
be happy. He desired for the sake of Mankind to redeem 
the Sabbath from a miserable fetish into the blessed boon 
for which God had intended it. Therefore, on the Sabbath 

* Shabbath, f. 108, 2. 


[ f Yoma , f. 84, 2. 


\ Shabbath , f. 64, 2. 


CHRIST AND THE SABBATH. 285 

days He healed the Demoniac ;* and Simon’s wife’s 
mother ;f and the man with the withered hand and 
the woman bound by a spirit of infirmity; § and the man 
with the dropsy ;|| and the paralytic at Bethesda and 
the man born blind. ** The Jews vehemently denounced 
Him for these deeds of compassion, even though they 
involved no labour. Our Lord showed the inherent hy- 
pocrisy of their denunciations by pointing out that, in far 
smaller matters they violated their own professions, since 
none of them hesitated to loose his ox or ass from the 
manger and lead him away to watering ; or to draw out on 
the Sabbath an animal that had fallen into a pit. When 
Shemaiah and Abtalion had found Hillel almost frozen on 
the outer window-sill of their lecture-room on a Sabbath, 
they had not hesitated to spend a considerable amount of 
labour to rub, and warm, and rouse him ; ff and so far 
from being blamed for this, their remark that “ he was 
worthy that the Sabbath should be profaned on his behalf ” 
had met with universal approval. So too, when their op- 
ponents were not concerned in the matter, the Talmudic 
writings can praise Rabbis for even bearing burdens on the 
Sabbath ! In the Midrash Kohelethfy Abba Techama is 
praised for carrying a sick man into a town, and going 
back — though it was the Sabbath — to fetch his bundle. 

The rule laid down by our Lord with perfect distinctness 
was, “ It is lawful to do good on the Sabbath. ”§§ Could 
there be a stronger contrast to the Rabbinic inanity, which 
allowed bathing on the Sabbath, but not in the Dead Sea or 
the Mediterranean, because the waters of those seas were 
supposed to be medicinal, and healing is unlawful on the 
Sabbath Day ! |||| 

The objection to the Sabbath healings was sometimes 


*Mark i. 23-26. 
§ Luke xiii. 11. 
** John ix. 

§§ Matt. xii. 12. 


f Mark i. 30, 31. 

| Luke xiv. 2. 
ft Yoma, f. 35, 6. 

HI Shabbath, f. log, I. 


% Matt. xii. 10. 
Tfjohn v. 8, 9. 

\X Yoma , f. 91, 2. 


286 


THE LIFE OF LIVES. 


complicated by the fact that Jesus had broken one of the 
trivial Pharisaic Toldoth or derivative rules. Thus He had 
bidden the healed man to take up his bed and walk,* 
and the Jews “sought to slay Him because He had done 
these things on the Sabbath day.” But the so-called 
“ bed ” was a mere mat or pallet, the carrying of which was 
necessary for the man, and involved no labour. The act 
bore no relation to the real meaning of Jer. xvii. 21, 22, 
“Take heed to yourselves, and bear no burden on the 
Sabbath day, neither carry forth a burden out of your 
houses,” which was spoken to prevent the profanation of 
the Sabbath by daily toil and commerce. Although, there- 
fore, the Rabbis had decided that “ to carry anything from 
a public place to a private house on the Sabbath ” rendered 
a man liable to death by stoning, f our Lord intentionally 
ignored the literalism which strained out a gnat yet 
swallowed a camel. 

Again, when Jesus healed the man born blind, the miracle 
went for nothing in the obstinate perversion of the Phari- 
sees; but, because He had effected the miracle by anoint- 
ing the man’s eyes with clay moistened with saliva, they 
declared that “ He was not of God, because He keepeth 
not the Sabbath ; ” \ and said, “ We know that this man is 
a sinner.”§ Clay and saliva || were both regarded as thera- 
peutic agents, and our Lord had used both as helps to the 
faith of those whom He cured.' T The Jews themselves 

*John v. 10, 16 ; Mark ii. 11, vi. 55, upa^aTog, grabatus; Heb., mittah ; 
Luke v. 24, k1ivl6lov ; Attic, aKipirovg ; F r. grabat. It was a mere palliasse , 
or even sometimes an abeijah (outer robe) folded up, as we see from Ex. xxii. 
27, where it is forbidden to take a man’s upper robe in payment for a debt 
because it is “that whereon he sleepeth ” and “his only covering.” Comp. 
Virg. Mor. 5. “ Membra levat sensim vili demissa grabato” 

f Shabbath , vi.i. 

X John ix. 16. § John ix. 24. 

| Tac. Hist. iv. 81 ; Suet. Vesp. 7 ; Plin. H. N. xxviii. 7. Comp. Mark 
viii. 23, vii. 33 ; Shabbath xiv. 4 (where the healing application of saliva to 
the eyes on the Sabbath is distinctly forbidden). 

Matt. xii. 5. 


CHRIST AND THE SABBATH. 287 

held that there was “ no Sabbatism in the Temple,” and 
therefore that the Priests “ profaned the Sabbath in the 
Temple and were blameless.”* To Christ the Temple of 
God was the Temple of infinite, all-embracing compassion. 

Again, on a certain Sabbath the disciples, in their 
poverty and hunger, as they were making their way 
through the cornfields, began to pluck the ears of corn, and 
to rub them in the palms of their hands. Now, by two of 
the thirty-nine Avdth or primary rules, all reaping and 
threshing on the Sabbath were forbidden ; and one of the 
numberless Toldoth or “ derivative rules ” regarded pluck- 
ing the ears of corn (even to satisfy hunger !) as a kind 
of reaping, and rubbing them as a kind of threshing. Im- 
mediately, therefore, the Phariasic spies came down on 
them with their contemptuous censure, “ Why do ye do 
that which is not lawful on the Sabbath Day? ” and going 
at once to Jesus, who seems to have been walking apart 
from the Apostles, they said, “ See ” (pointing to the 
Apostles,) “why do they do on the Sabbath Day what is 
not lawful?” The vitality of these artificial trivialities 
among the Jews is remarkable. Abarbanel relates that 
when in 1492 the Jews were driven from Spain, and not 
allowed to enter the city of Fez, lest they should cause 
a famine, “ they had to live on grass, but ‘ religiously ’ 
avoided the violation of their Sabbath by plucking the 
grass with their hands! ” Yet in order to keep the small 
regulation, they gave themselves the infinitely greater 
Sabbath-labour of grovellmg on their knees , and cropping the 
grass with their teeth ! But our Lord at once defended 
His poor Apostles from censure by reminding these literal- 
ists how on the Sabbath no less a saint than their own 
David had illustrated the principle that physical necessities 
abrogated ceremonial obligations, and had fearlessly vio- 
lated the letter of the law by eating the sacred shew-bread 
with his companions, though it was “ most holy,” and was 
* See Matt. xii. 5 ; Numb, xxviii. 9. 


288 


THE LIFE OF LIVES. 


expressly reserved for the Priests alone. * Mercy is always 
a thing infinitely more sacred than “ miserable micrology.” 

After the narration of this incident in Luke vi. l-y, we 
find in the Cambridge Uncial Manuscript D. the famous 
Codex Bezce , the passage: “On the same day, observing 
one working on the Sabbath, He said, ‘ O man, if indeed 
thou knowest what thou art doing, thou art blessed, but if 
thou knowest not, thou art accursed, and a transgressor of 
the Law. * ” f 

The authority of a single manuscript is, of course, insuffi- 
cient to establish the genuineness of this passage as a part 
of St. Luke’s Gospel ; but there is much to be said for the 
authenticity of the fact recorded. A man would not indeed 
have dared to work openly on the Sabbath, for then he 
would have incurred the certainty of being stoned ; but if 
he had been compelled in some way — say in his own house 
— to toil for some purpose of necessity, piety, or charity, 
then his toil was perfectly justified by our Lord’s own 
teaching. Even the wiser Rabbis agreed that it was better 
to work seven days in the week than to beg one’s bread. 
No less a personage than Rabbi Jochanan said — “in the 
name of the people of Jerusalem ” — “ Make thy Sabbath as 
a we<ek-day rather than depend upon other people .” % I n any 
case, if there be any basis for the story, in some agraphon 
dogma of Christ current in early Christian days, His meaning 
could only have been, “ If thy work is of faith — if thou art 
thoroughly persuaded in thine inmost heart and conscience 
that thy Sabbath work is justifiable — then thou art acting 
with true insight ; but if thy work is not of faith, it is sin.”§ 

* Lev. xxiv. 9, xxii. io. See i Sam. xxi. 6. The scene took place in the 
Tabernacle at Nob, and Abiathar may have been assisting his father Ahimelech. 
Mark ii. 26. The words “ in the High priesthood of Abiathar ” are omitted 
in D, and some old Latin MSS.; and if the reading rov apxteptus in A. C., etc., 
be right, the words might mean “ in the times of Abiathar g 

f On this reading, see Westcott, Introd. to the Gospels , Appendix C. 

% Pesachim , f. 113, 1 ; Hershon, Treasurer of the Talmud , f. 194. 

§ See Rom. xiv. 22, 23 ; 1 Cor. viii. 1. 


CHRIST AND THE SABBATH. 289 

Not all the Pharisees were scribes or lawyers.* In Mark 
ii. 16 we read of “ The Scribes of the Pharisees.” They 
were the “ doctors ” or “ theologians ” of the Pharisaic 
party, and were held in the highest honour. When one of 
them complained that, in His strong denunciations of the 
Pharisees, Jesus insulted them also,f He emphasised His 
disapproval by pointing out their supercilious tyranny 
(Luke xi. 46), their insincerity and persecuting rancour 
(47-51), and their arrogant exclusiveness (52)4 But His 
eight-fold “ woe ” on the Pharisees was even more severe. 
He upbraided them for their frivolous scrupulosity (Luke 
xi. 39, 40), mingled with hypocrisy (41); for their gross lack 
of reality in religion (42); for their pride, ambition, and self- 
seeking (43) ; and for their hidden depths of corruption, 
which made them like tombs glistering with whitewash, or 
graves over which men walked without being aware of the 
putrescence underneath (44). In the seven great “ woes ” 
pronounced in the Temple on the last day of His public 
ministry, He spoke yet more fully of their blind folly, 
which carefully strained out the gnat, yet swallowed the 
camel ; which tithed the stalks of pot-herds, yet neglected 
justice, mercy, and faith ; which professed external scru- 
pulosity, while within they were full from extortion and 
excess; which bound heavy burdens on men’s shoulders, 
and would not move them with one of their fingers ; which 
shut the gate of the kingdom of heaven against men, and 
neither entered nor suffered them to enter; which com- 
passed sea and land to make one proselyte, and then made 
him tenfold more a son of Gehenna than themselves ; 
which devoured widows’ houses, while for a pretence they 

* There does not seem to be much distinction between “ Scribes ” and 
“ Lawyers” or “ Teachers of the Law.” See Luke xi. 52, 53 ; Matt, xxiii. 13. 
The name “Scribes” for those who wrote out and studied the Books of the 
Law begins with Ezra. 

f Luke xi. 45. 

X “ Ye have caused many to stumble at the Law.” Mai. ii. 8. 


290 


THE LIFE OF LIVES. 


made long prayers. * Severe as are these denunciations, 
they are amply supported by many scathing passages in the 
Talmud. To this day in Jerusalem, “You are a Porish ” 
(i. e ., a Pharisee) is, says Dr. Frankl, a Jewish writer, “ the 
bitterest term of reproach.” “ They proudly separate them- 
selves,” he says, “ from the rest of their co-religionists. 
Fanatical , bigoted , intolerant , quarrelsome, and in truth, 
irreligious , with them the outward observance of the cere- 
monial law is everything; the moral law little binding, 
morality itself of no importance.”-)* And the results of 
Pharisaism were wholly bad. Formalism killed religion, as 
the strangling ivy kills the oak round which it twines. “ At 
last over the whole inert stagnation of the soul there grew 
a scurf of feeble corruption. Petty vices, meannesses, little- 
nesses were rife, and there appeared at last nothing to 
mark the religious man except a little ill-temper, a faint 
spite against those who held different opinions, and a fee- 
ble, self-important pleasure in detecting heresy.” 

If the Pharisees had only listened to the words of Eter- 
nal Wisdom, how different might have been the course of 
history! But, although Jesus had at first tried to win 
them by gentle courtesy, they set their faces as a flint 
against Him, and tried in every way to thwart His efforts 
and stir up the multitudes to kill Him. They displayed 
the deadliest insolence — treating with continuous and 
scornful jeers even His warnings against their besetting 
avarice.;): The words of most just judgment which had at 
last to be uttered by the lips of love, involved the final 
breach between Him and the self-constituted religious 
teachers of His day. At the close of one of these utter- 
ances, the Pharisees, in a scene of violence almost unique 
in His ministry, began to press vehemently upon Him, and 

* Matt. vi. 7, xxiii. 1-36 ; Mark xii. 40 ; Luke xx. 47. 

f Frankl, The Jews in the East , ii. 27. 

% etjefivKTijpiijov, Luke xvi. 14, xxiii. 35. Comp. 2 Sam. xix. 21 ; Psalm iL. 
2-4. 


CHRIST AND THE SABBATH. 291 

tried to catch grounds of accusation against Him about very 
many things by treacherous questions, lying in wait for 
Him to hunt something out of His mouth,* until the very 
multitude, in alarm and excitement, gathered for His per- 
sonal protection round the door of the house in which the 
scene had taken place. 

But He came “ to cast fire upon the earth ” — the fire 
which is salutary as well as retributive ; which warms and 
purifies as well as consumes. One of the most remarkable 
of the “ unwritten sayings ” is “ He who is near Me, is near 
the fire.” f 

Can there be the least doubt, we ask, after this survey 
of the invariable teaching of Christ, wherein pure religion 
does, and wherein it does not, consist ? May it not be 
summed up even in the words of the Old Testament — “ He 
hath shown thee, O man, what is good ; and what doth the 
Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, 
and to walk humbly with thy God?” St. Paul is emphatic 
in teaching that in Christ Jesus neither circumcision 
availeth anything nor uncircumcision, but faith working by 
love. The revelation of Christ’s will is unmistakably plain. 
His commandments are summed up in the one word “ love.” 
He said that to do unto others as we would they should do 
unto us is the Law and the Prophets ; that to say, “ Lord, 
Lord,” is nothing, but to do the will of His Father ia 
heaven ; that if we would enter into life we must keep His 
commandments; that he who heareth the Word of God and 
keepeth it, the same is His brother and His sister and His. 
mother. If we care at all for what Christ taught we shall 
think less than nothing of the devotee’s will-worship, or the 
ascetic’s self-torture, or artificial absolutions, or vestments, 
or shibboleths, or Church exclusiveness, or hierarchic usur- 
pations. What we shall desire will be simple faithfulness 
in “the daily round, the common task,” the humble prayer 

* Luke xi. 53, 54, anoGTOfiaTi^eiv. . . B^pevaai . . . deivtig kvkx £LV - 

f Preserved in Ignatius, Origen, and Didymus. 


292 


THE LIFE OF LIVES. 


offered in secret, the sweet silent charities of common 
life — the imitation of Christ, learnt, not from corrupt 
manuals, or ecclesiastical traditions, but from His own lips, 
and His own life, and His own Spirit shed abroad in the 
hearts of all of every communion who humbly desire to be 
His true servants, and who prefer His teaching and His 
example to the intrusive inventions and tyrannies of men 
deceiving and self-deceived. 


CHAPTER XXVII. 


THE MIRACLES OF CHRIST. 

“ Miraculum voco quicquid arduum aut insolitum supra spem vel 
facultatem mirantis apparet.” — Augustine, De Util. Cred. 16. 

“ Quisquis prodigia ut credat requirit, magnum est ipse prodigium, 
qui, mundo credente, non credit.” — AUG. De Civ. Dei, c. 22. 

“ Prima miracula confestim fecit, ne videretur cum labore facere ; 
postea quum auctoritatem satis constituerat, moram interum adhibuit 
salutarem.” — B engel. 

I SHALL not here pause to enter once more into the ques- 
tion of the credibility of the Gospel miracles. Enough for 
us to say that the attempt to account for all Christ's 
miracles by hallucination or exaggeration breaks down in 
every direction before the utter simplicity of the Gospel 
narratives, which differ toto ccelo from the portents of the 
Apocryphal Gospels, and from those invented to glorify 
mediaeval saints. Had the Apostles been capable of deceit- 
ful intentions, their narratives would not have been marked 
by such extreme sobriety and moderation. The miracles 
which Christ wrought were not denied by the Pharisees, 
and are admitted even in the Talmud. The Evangelists 
regarded John the Baptist as the great Forerunner, as the 
promised Elijah. Yet they acknowledge with the frankest 
truthfulness that “ John did no miracle," and they represent 
the Son of Man as habitually repressing and restraining His 
miraculous gifts (Matt. xxvi. 53) ; as only exercising them 
for definite ends ; and as forbidding many of those who 
received them to blazon them abroad. He only appealed 
to His works as giving further emphasis to the grandeur 
of His words. To all believing Christians the one sur- 
passing, overwhelming miracle is that of the Incarnation. 

293 


294 


THE LIFE OF LIVES. 


Christ being what He was, miracles wrought out of com- 
passion would radiate from Him as naturally as sunbeams 
from the sun. 

In the endeavour to grasp the essential chaiacteristics of 
our Lord’s miracles, and the relation in which they stand 
to His whole work, we may learn important lessons from the 
names by which they are ordinarily described. It will be 
seen at once that they all involved deeds of mercy, or con- 
veyed lessons of truth, and do not bear the slightest rela- 
tion to the senseless prodigies of Eastern invention, or 
Apocryphal romance. 

1. In the Synoptic Gospels they are often called 
“ Powers ” (Svv a pen) ;* seven times in St. Matthew, and 
twice in St. Mark and St. Luke ; and the word “ Power 
(A. V. “ Virtue ”f) is applied to the source from which 
they emanated. By this designation they are represented 
as the outcome of a divine gift. 

2. The word “wonders” or “ portents ” (repair a), is only 
used of them three times, and always in connection with 
“ signs.” J This word describes them by the effect of 
amazement which they produced upon the minds of those 
who witnessed them. The rousing of astonishment was 
the lowest and poorest result of our Lord’s exercise of His- 
divine gifts, and one which He always discouraged. His 
object was to lead men beyond the miracle to the facts it 
was designed to prove. § 

3. The word “ Sign ” and “ Signs ” (Grjpeioi) is used fre- 
quently in the Gospels, and is the designation ordinarily 
employed by St. John. This word indicates the main pur- 

* Sometimes rendered in the A. V. “mighty works,” “wonderful works,” 1 
or “ miracles.” It is not used by St. John. 

f 2 Mark v. 30 ; Luke vi. 19. 

\ Matt. xxiv. 24 ; Mark xiii. 22 ; John iv. 48. 

§ Matt. viii. 27, ix. 8, 33, xv. 31, etc.; John vi. 26. The name Oav/naoiov 
only occurs in Matt. xxi. 15, and izapa 6 o^ov (something abnormal) only in Luke 
v. 26 (comp. Mark. ii. 12). Christ recognised this element of the value of 
miracles. John v. 36, xi. 15, xx. 31 ; Mark ii. 10, n ; Matt. xi. 20, 21. 


THE MIRACLES OF CHRIST. 


295 


pose for which they were wrought. They were the creden- 
tials of Christ’s divine power, and of His unity with the 
Father. 

4. The fourth name, “ Works,” is almost peculiar to St. 
John, where it occurs many times.* It is the deepest and 
most characteristic of the four terms. It represents the 
miracles as the natural outcome of Christ’s relation to the 
Father, who was the real doer of the works. “ They are 
the periphery of the circle of which He is the centre. The 
great miracle is the Incarnation ; all else, so to speak, fol- 
lows naturally and of course. It is no wonder that He 
whose name is ‘ Wonderful ’ (Is. ix. 6) does works of won- 
der ; the only wonder would be if He did them not.” f 
They were the normal fruit of the heavenly tree; the efflu- 
ence spontaneously irradiated from the Sun of Righteous- 
ness. In the miracle of His personality all that might 
otherwise startle us in the story of His miracles is com- 
pletely absorbed. The influence of a higher nature finds 
expression in “ works ” which are not contrary to, but are 
beyond, and above, the ordinary working of earth’s natural 
laws. 

It is important to observe that miracles do not seem 
to have been primarily intended as evidences of Christ’s 
divinity, but rather as adding emphasis to His teaching, 
and calling attention to His unity with the Father. Our 

* John vi. 28, vii. 21, x. 25, 32, 38, xiv. II, etc. But it also occurs in Matt, 
xi. 2. 

f Trench, On Miracles, p. 8. Ullmann, Sinlessness of Jesus, p. 193. 
Ammonius, quoted by Theophylact, misses the force of the word oiyxeiov 
entirely in the definition repag tt apa (f>vmv, orjpela napa owrfletav yiverai. 
Schleiermacher ( Leben Jesu, p. 206) rightly says, “ In OTjpelov the most promi- 
nent thing is the significance of what we should deduce from the result ; in 
dvvapcc, * power,’ the chief thing is the nature of the actoj — that he has in him- 
self such a power fand in repa ?, ‘ wonder,’ the comparison of this result with 
other results.” In. Acts ii. 22, St. Peter, using the three words, says that 
“ Jesus of Nazareth was approved of God unto you by powers, and wonders, 
and signs, which God did by Him in the midst of you, even as ye yourselves 
know.” See Steinmeyer, On Miracles , p. 42 ; Col. i. 19. 


THE LIFE OF LIVES. 


296 

Lord was well aware that miracles will not convince the 
obstinate and the hardened.* His miracles were forms of 
Revelation, f Had they been meant to prostrate opposi- 
tion, or to enforce belief, their characteristics would have 
been different ; nor, in that case, would our Lord have per- 
sistently refused to exhibit the startling and overwhelming 
“ sign from heaven ” — the miracle of constantly-descending 
manna to supply bodily needs, or the portent in the sun 
or moon or stars — which the Pharisees and the multitude 
demanded. In all true and transforming faith there is a 
moral and spiritual element, and Jesus taught that it was a 
higher thing to believe in His words, and to recognise that 
the words which He spake were Spirit and were Life, than to- 
believe for the works’ sake.J The miracles were not acts 
of His divinity working apart from His humanity. He was 
truly God, perfectly man, indivisibly God-Man, distinctly 
God and Man ; and He appeals to His works only to prove 
that the Father dwelt in Him, with whom He was indis- 
solubly united. § He was co-ordinately the Doer of the 
works.] Hence the miracles “ belong properly to the 
believer and not to the doubter. They are a treasure 
rather than a bulwark. They are in their inmost sense 
instruction and not evidence.” T 

All of our Lord’s miracles fall under the three heads of 
miracles on Nature, on man, and on the spirit-world. 

1. The miracles exercised in the world of Nature are, for 
reasons already indicated, the rarest. With the exception 

*Luke xvi. 31. Comp. John. xii. 37, xi. 45, 46. 

f St. Thomas Aquinas distinguishes between miracula qua sunt ad Jidei con - 
firmationem, and miracula de quibus ipsa est fides. See Steinmeyer, On the 
Miracles, p. 7 ; Wendt ii. 192-197. 

\ Theophylact wisely wrote, “ Preaching is confirmed by miracles, and mira- 
cles by preaching.” 

§ John xiv. 10. 

|| John v. 17, 19. 

Westcott, The Gospel Miracles, p. 7. Gerhard says, “ Miracula sunt doc- 
trinae tesserae et sigilla ; quemadmodum igitur sigillum literis avulsum nihil pre- 
bat, ita quoque miracula sine doctrina nihil valent.” 


THE MIRACLES OF CHRIST. 297 

of the two miracles of the multiplication of the loaves and 
fishes — of which, perhaps, the real character was scarcely 
understood by most of the 5000 and of the 4000 for whose 
benefit they were wrought — the Nature-miracles were only 
directly witnessed by Christ’s nearest disciples. These 
were the changing of water into wine, the stilling of the 
storm, the walking on the sea, and the withering of the 
barren fig-tree. The miracles of the two draughts of fishes 
are probably to be regarded rather as instances of supernat- 
ural knowledge than as supersessions of the normal course 
of natural laws.* 

2. The miracles on man were, without exception, works 
of mercy to relieve the sick and the suffering. They are 
healings of the blind ; f of the deaf and dumb ; of the impo- 
tent ; of the sick ; of lepers ; of the palsied ; of the dropsi- 
cal ; of the fever-stricken ; of the man with the withered 
hand ; of the woman with the issue. They were granted 
either to the faith of personal suppliants, or to the inter- 
cession of their parents or friends. 

3. The miracles on the spirit-world are chiefly those ex- 
tended to men or women possessed of the demons,^ who 

* Luke v. 1-11 ; John xxi. 1-23. The story of the stater in the fish’s 
mouth stands in all respects alone. It is not said that any miracle was wrought. 
It taught no spiritual truth, and did not arise from pity, nor depend on faith. 
The meaning of the words has probably been misunderstood. On this subject 
I must refer to what I have said in The Life of Christ . 

f Found in the Gospels only in Mark viii. 23 ; Matt. ix. 29, xi. 4, 5, xv. 30, 
xx. 34, xxi. 14 ; Luke vii. 22 ; John ix. 6. 

\ AaifjAvta, always “demons” (Heb. Shedim). It is a pity that even the 
Revised Version preserved the erroneous version “ devils.” Josephus, in 
accordance with the general view of that day, defines “ demons” as “ the 
spirits of wicked men , entering into , and slaying , the living .” See Antt. vi. 8, 
2, ii. 3 ; B. f. viii. 6, 3. For a full discussion of the nature of demoniac pos- 
session, see Jahn, Archceologia Biblica, E. T., pp. 200-216. Weber, Syst. d. 
altsynag. Paldst. Theol. The Talmud describes “demons” as resembling 
men. Pesikta, i. 504. In the Book of Enoch (xv.) they are regarded as fallen 
angels (comp. 1 Cor. x. 20). If the account of an exorciser in Josephus {Antt. 
viii. 2, 5) be compared with the Gospel narratives it will be seen at once how 
free from superstition, and stamped with the mark of truth, are the latter. 


THE LIFE OF LIVES. 


298 

afflicted them either with wild and convulsive madness, or 
with grievous physical calamities. There were also three 
instances in which Jesus raised the dead — the daughter of 
Jairus; the young son of the widow of Nain ; and Lazarus 
whom he loved. The whole series of miracles, of which 
thirty-three are recorded by the Evangelists,* was crowned 
by our Lord’s own Resurrection and Ascension, when by 
death He had conquered him that hath the power of 
death — that is the Devil. 

It is not unnatural to ask how it came about that such 
miracles of power and mercy, and many which were 
wrought collectively, and on a large scale, did not — even 
apart from our Lord’s teaching — exercise a more decisive 
effect in hushing all criticism, and overcoming all opposi- 
tion. The answer seems to be twofold. On the one hand, 
miracles, or what passed as such, were not unknown in the 
Eastern world.f Various Rabbis are said to have wrought 
miracles, and our Lord Himself tells us that exorcism was 
commonly practised among the Jews themselves. “ If I by 
Beelzebul cast out demons, by whom do your sons cast 
them out ? Therefore shall they be your judges.” \ 
Indeed, according to Josephus, the power to eject demons 
has been specially bestowed upon his people, and he tells 
one remarkable story respecting it. What was known as 
demoniacal possession often showed itself in forms of vio- 
lent nervous excitement, by which the sin-polluted mind 
swayed the functions and temperaments of the degraded 
and weakened body. Such emotional conditions are capa- 
ble of being affected by the influence of stronger wills and 

* St. Matthew narrates twenty miracles ; St. Mark, eighteen ; St. Luke, 
nineteen ; St. John, seven. 

f Jos. B. /. *vii. 6, 3 ; Ant t. viii. 2, 5 ; Dial. c. Tryph. i. 

\ Matt. xii. 27 ; Mark iii. 22, etc. The true reading seems to be Beelzebul. 
Beelzebub was the name of the god of Ekron, like Zeus Apomuios, “the 
averter of flies,” 2 Kings i. 2. Beelzebul may mean “ the lord of the (celestial) 
habitation,” or, as a Jewish name of scorn, “lord of dung.” — See Jahn, 
A rchceologia Biblica. 


r '~ THE MIRACLES OF CHRIST. 299 

holier personalities.* It was easy, within certain limits, 
even for an impostor to excite a belief in his possession of 
supernatural powers, as was the case with Theudas, who led 
hundreds of deluded followers to feel confident that he 
could divide the Jordan before them, and lead them over 
dryshod ; f and during the procuratorship of Felix no less 
than 30,000 had assembled on the Mount of Olives in the 
belief that another impostor would throw down the walls 
of Jerusalem before their advancing footsteps. The Phari- 
sees, without the smallest tendency to believe in Christ, 
yet admitted, and were forced to admit, that He did work 
miracles, and that His miracles were works of love and 
mercy4 

But, secondly, the Pharisees nullified the effect of them 
on the minds of the multitude by attributing them to the 
co-operation of evil spirits. They constantly averred that 
Christ “ had a demon,” who conferred on Him the power 
of doing wonders. They challenged Him to perform some 
“ sign from heaven f \ such as no demon could perform ; but 
He refused to meet a challenge which would not, even if it 
had been performed, have really swept away their doubts ; 
and He pointed them to His teaching, and the sign of the 
Prophet Jonah. The preaching of Jonah had converted 
the Ninevites ; the Queen of the South had come all 
the way to Jerusalem to hear the wisdom of Solomon ; 
if they refused to listen to one greater than Jonah or 
Solomon they would harden their hearts even to the 
end. 

His Miracles of Mercy, the course of which seems to 
have begun with the healing of the demoniac at Caper- 

* “ Demons ” were supposed to be the spirits of the wicked dead. Jos. B. J. 
vii. 6, 3. The Jews attributed all sorts of moral failures and physical calami- 
ties to demons (as is still the case in the East, where they are called devs). See 
Ps. xci. 6, lxx.; Targ. Cant. iv. 6. 

f/Jos. Antt. xix. 5, i. Comp. B.J. c 13, 4. 

X John xi. 47, xii. 19. Miracles which could not be denied were attributed 
to kishoof, “magic.” Sanhedrin, vii. 13, 19. See Derenbourg, pp. 106, 361. 


30 ° 


THE LIFE OF LIVES. 


naum,* were in the great majority of instances miracles of 
simple compassion. Jesus suffered with those whom He 
saw suffer, and St. Mark records how, at the sight of 
human infirmity, a sigh was wrung from His inmost heart. f 
“ I have compassion on the multitude" was a feeling which 
always filled the Saviour’s soul. J His miracles all look 
back to the Incarnation, and forward to the Ascension, now 
bringing God to man, and now raising man to God, as signs 
of the full accomplishment of his earthly work. § They 
differ fundamentally from the legends and miracles of 
other religions. Each miracle, was also the revelation of a 
mystery, and all tend to raise us from a blind idolatry of 
physical laws to the consciousness of a nobler presence, and 
of a higher power. Thus they are a prophecy of a more 
glorious world, and a revelation of a near God unseen — 
an Epiphany of sovereignty and of mercy. They involve 
a revelation of hope, of restoration, of forgiveness. The 
same powers which conquered sickness and death are not 
less mighty to overcome their spiritual antitypes, “the 
blindness of sensuality and the leprosy of caste, the fever of 
restlessness, the palsy of indolence, the death of sin.” 

I have already pointed out that it is no small indication 
o^ the simple truthfulness of the Gospels that although 
John stood among the greatest of the Prophets they do not 
attribute to him a single miracle. “ John did no miracle,” 
yet he exercised over the people a stupendous influence. 
The Evangelists only attribute to Christ these works, and 
signs, and powers, because they narrated things as they 
were, with no desire to suppress any more than to invent. 

* Mark i. 21-34. f Mark vii. 34. 

\ Mark i. 41, viii. 2. Comp. Matt. ix. 36, xiv. 14, xx. 34 ; Luke vii. 13. 

§ I here refer to the wise teaching on this subject in Bp. Westcott’s Charac- 
teristics of the Gospel Miracles. 


i 


CHAPTER XXVIII. 

I 

THE GLADNESS AND SORROW OF THE CHRIST. 

to 6 aupvov avrov x a P<* vperpa. — ATHANASIUS, De Incarn, 

“ Crede mihi, res severa est verum gaudium.” — Augustine. 

It has been an error, and one not wholly devoid of disas- 
trous consequences, to regard the life of our Lord on earth 
as a life of continuous and almost overwhelming sorrow. 
This has arisen from too exclusive a contemplation of His 
last year of flight and rejection, and of the anguish of His 
death and passion ; and it has led to the overlooking of the 
indications which point to the many gladder hours of the 
Son of Man. He did, indeed, “bear our griefs and carry 
our sorrows * but man’s life is not an unbroken misery, 
and Jesus had the deepest sympathy with all natural and 
innocent sources of gladness. Nay more, He often called 
attention to the truth that, in despite of earthly trials and 
persecution, the Christian’s joy shines on like a lamp, 
unquenched by the darkness of the tomb. In the midst of 
the worst misfortunes which the devil or the world could 
inflict, He bade His followers to be not only patient in 
tribulation, but also to rejoice in hope ; f — to “rejoice and 
be exceeding glad,” for great was their reward in heaven ; 
nay, even to recognise their deep blessedness and “ to leap 
for joy.”J He never intended to reduce the natural 
blessedness of life to an artificial monotony of woe-begone 
abjectness. It was one of the objects of His life to give to 
men “ the oil of exultation for mourning, the spirit of joy 

* Is. liii. 4 : Heb. ix. 28 ; Matt. viii. 17. “ Himself took our infirmities 

and bare our diseases.” 

f Matt. v. 12. % Luke vi. 23. 

301 


302 


THE LIFE OF LIVES. 


for the spirit of heaviness * by His gift they should exult 
“ with joy unspeakable and full of glory.” f 

When the seventy returned with joy at the proof that 
even demons were subject unto them in Christ’s name, He 
bade them to rejoice still more that their names were written 
in heaven.:); The word ayaWlacriZ, “ exultation,” means 
“ abounding and overflowing joy,” and not only did Jesus 
bid His disciples “to exult,” but in witnessing the success 
of their simple-hearted ministrations He Himself “ exulted 
in spirit.” § 

Must we not feel confident that, during the thirty almost 
unrecorded years of life, in the lovely country, in the pure 
and happy home, in the humble and honourable toil, Jesus 
must have tasted of the most limpid well-springs of human 
happiness? Tli is happiness must have been immeasurably 
increased because His heart, unstained by any shadow of 
guilt, reflected the very blue of heaven. Let any one con- 
sider how much our human life is darkened by the deceit- 
fulness of sin; by the stings of shame ; by the voice of a 
self-reproach which cannot be silenced ; by the memory of 
wasted hours and desecrated gifts ; by erring jndgments ; 
by the constant sense of moral failure and unworthiness — 
and he will then be able to estimate what must have been 
the boyish and youthful happiness of one whose thoughts 
were ever — 

“ Pleasant as roses in the thickets blown, 

And pure as dew bathing their crimson leaves.” 

But do not we further see the constant elements of simple 
gladness throughout our Lord’s ministry ? He discounte- 

* Heb. i. 9, thuov ayaXX'iacEug. Comp. LXX.; Ps. xlv. 7, 8. 

t John xvi. 22 ; 1 Peter i. 6, 8, iv. 13 ; Rev. xix. 7 ; Acts ii. 26 ; Jude 24. 

% Luke x. 20. 

§ Luke x. 21, rjyaXX'iaaaro T(f Kvey/ian (the opposite extreme of emotion to. 
eveSpifxfjoaTo tcJ TTEvpari in John xi. 33). In the spurious letter of P. Lentulus 
to the Senate, it js said that “ He wept oft, but no one had ever seen Him 
smile.” This is an instance of the erroneous conception and groundless tradi- 
tion which I have pointed out. 


HIS GLADNESS AND SORROW. 


303 


nanced the showy abstinences of the Pharisees ; He prac- 
tised no form of Essene rigourism ; He had nothing of the 
habitual fulmination and stern asperities of the Baptist : 
He neither practised fasting Himself, nor encouraged His 
disciples to do- so. His whole attitude towards life show 
us that “ self-chosen, self-inflicted suffering, where it is not 
a wise discipline, is ingratitude to God, or rather it is 
partial suicide. The suffering in itself is nothing worth, 
the moral end for which it is the means gives it its 
value.” * 

He only recognised fasting as the natural expression of 
natural grief. He was radically opposed to the conception 
which looked upon self-inflicted burdens as a method for 
extorting God’s approval. He compared the ministry of 
John to children playing at funerals in the market-places, 
among companions who would not mourn ; and His own 
ministry to the games of merry children, playing at wed- 
dings, and piping for sullen comrades who would not dance. 
Throughout His life Jesus must have had in His heart pure 
fountains of perennial joy. He never knew, He could not 
know — except by keen sympathy with the lost — the accu- 
mulated miseries of selfishness, and its inevitable disappoint- 
ments. He never knew, He could not know, those terrors 
of a fearful expectation of most just judgment when 
“ Iniquity hath played her part, and Vengeance leaps upon 
the stage ” — when “ man’s gifts begin to fade as though a 
worm were gnawing at them ” — when “ the gnawing con- 
science reawakens the warning conscience ” — when “ Fear 
and Anguish divide the man’s soul between them, and the 
Furies of Hell leap upon his heart like a stage ” — when 
“ Thought calleth to Fear, Fear whistleth to Horror ; Hatred 
beckoneth to Despair, and saith, ‘ Come and help me to 
torment this sinner.’ One saith that she cometh from this 
sin, and another saith that she cometh from that sin — so the 
man goes through a thousand deaths and cannot die. Irons 
*Westcott, The Victory of the Cross, p. 82. 


304 


THE LIFE OF LIVES. 


are laid upon his body like a prisoner. All his lights are 
put out at once.” * 

These worst tragedies of human existence could never be 
personally experienced by Him who was “ holy, harmless, 
undefiled, separate from sinners, and made higher than the 
heavens.” 

All that we read of His ministry illustrates the noble 
words of the poet : — 

“ Gladness be with Thee, Saviour of the world ! 

I think this is the essential sign and seal 
Of goodness, that it ever waxes glad, 

And more glad, till the gladness blossoms forth- 
Into a rage to suffer for mankind 
And recommence at sorrow.” 

It was almost exclusively after the culmination of His 
ministry that sorrows burst like a hurricane upon the life of 
the Saviour of the world. His afflictions came from the 
wickedness of men, and always, in our human career, 

“ Man is to man the sorest, surest ill.” 

Yet we have learnt from Him that “our light affliction, 
which is but for a moment, worketh for us, more and more 
exceedingly, an eternal weight of glory, while we look not 
at the things which are seen, but at the things which are 
not seen.” f We must remember that, far more than is the 
case with us, Christ, in the midst of things temporal, and 
the worst trials which they could bring, was living in the 
constant realisation of the things unseen and eternal. The 
human privations — the homeliness of Him who had not 
where to lay His Head, the poverty, the wanderings, the 
intense, bitter, unscrupulous hatred and opposition of the 
religious leaders of His day, the calumuious meanness of 
those who called Him “a gluttonous man and a wine- 
bibber,” “a Samaritan,” “a blasphemer,” “a Sabbath- 
breaker,” and said that He had a demon, and was the agent 

* Henry More, The Betraying of Christ. \ 2 Cor. iv. 17. 


HIS GLADNESS AND SORROW. 305 

of Beelzebul — these He could lightly disregard. They 
simply arose from the fact that — 

“ The base man, judging of the good, 

Puts his own baseness to him, by default 
Of will and nature.” 

It has never been otherwise in any age or nation. 

“ It is the penalty of being great 
Still to be aimed at ; ” 

and even Plato wrote, “ The just man will be scourged, 
racked, bound, blinded and after suffering many ills, will 
crucified ” (ava6x iy dv\ev$ r f6a r ai)* 

Calumny and misrepresentation pained Him, not at all 
on His own account, but out of pity for the wretches who, 
under pretence of religion, could be so grossly guilty of 
such slanderous lies. That men who proposed to teach 
truth should revel in falsehood ; that men who claimed to 
be sources of light should live in a self-chosen darkness ; 
that men who ought to have set the example of love and 
humility should use every power they possessed to dis- 
seminate an arrogant hatred — these were thorns in His 
crown of sorrow; and 

“ Face loved of little children long ago, 

Head hated of the Priests and Elders then, 

Say was not this Thy sorrow — to foreknow 

In Thy last hour the deeds of Christian men ? ” 

Christ bore the worst which a bad world and a corrupted 
Church could inflict upon Him ; yet, through His invisible 
aid and presence, His followers in all ages have learnt how 
to be in need as well as how to abound. Amid the utmost 
evils with which men could torture them, they have known 
how to be “ pressed on every side, yet not straitened ; 
perplexed, yet not unto despair; pursued, yet not for- 
saken ; smitten down, yet not destroyed ; always bearing 
* Plato, De Rep. ii. 362. 


306 THE LIFE OF LIVES. 

about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the 
life also of Jesus may be manifested in their body.” * 

There was one trial which, most of all, made the iron 
enter into Christ’s soul. When the gleam of enthusiasm 
which welcomed His early preaching had died out ; when 
the people took wilful offence at the words which they 
would not understand ; when he began to doubt whether 
even His beloved disciples might not fall away from Him ; 
when He could hardly speak in any Synagogue without 
‘seeing the Scribes and Pharisees, who came to spy upon 
Him from Jerusalem, scowling at Him in bitter envy, or 
regarding Him with supercilious smiles of fancied superi- 
ority ; when He heard their 

“ Blind and naked Ignorance 
Delivering brawling judgments all day long 
On all things unashamed ; ” 

when He, in His Divine, ethereal loftiness of soul, was 
thrust into daily contact with every form of meanness and 
misery, in the vulgarities, the garrulities, the disgraces, 
the insinuated slandars, the infinitesimal littleness of fallen 
human souls, which boasted of their immaculate upright- 
ness ; when He was hardly safe from perso'nal molestation 
even in the towns and villages of Galilee ; when He heard 
that “ the fox” Herod Antipasf had designs to seize Him ; 
when He learnt that not only the disciples of John, but 
even the Baptist himself, in his rocky dungeon, were 
beginning to yield to doubts respecting Him ; when flight 
into heathen lands and concealment in distant cities 
became a necessity ; when on every side He encountered 
opposition and unbelief ; when He witnessed around Him 
the ravages of disease and the triumphs of the Evil One, 

* 2 Cor. iv. 8, 9, io. 

f Literally, “Go ye and tell this she- fox" {ry alumni ravry) ' ATmtteki^o) in 
Aristophanes ( Vesp . i. 241) means “ to make covert -attacks." It is remark- 
able as being the only recorded word of unmitigated contempt which our Lord 
ever used. 


HIS GLADNESS AND SORROW. 307 

and looked out over a Dead Sea of human debasement, 
whose raging and swelling waters cast up mire and dirt ; 
when He saw “ faces with the terrible stamp of various 
degradation, and features scarred by sickness, dimmed by 
sensuality, convulsed by passion, pinched by poverty, 
shadowed by sorrow, branded with remorse, broken down 
by labour, tortured by disease, dishonoured with foul 
uses ; ” when He saw religion itself degraded into petty 
feebleness and rotted with conceit and posturing hypoc- 
risy ; when He saw “ intellects without power, hearts with- 
out life, men with their bones full of the sin of their 
youth ; ” when instead of what should be the true noble- 
ness of Humanity, with 

“ Its godlike head crowned with spiritual stars 
And touching other worlds,” 

He saw the pretence of religion conjoined with the depths 
of wickedness : — then, that which was far more full of 
anguish to the perfect holiness of Jesus than the sting of 
death itself, was trembling pity for the victims of the 
world, the flesh, and the devil, in their apparently hopeless 
overthrow ; in their awful, and, to all love short of the 
Divine, their apparently irremediable degradation. 

It is interesting and deeply instructive to consider the 
words used by the Evangelists to indicate the emotions of 
Jesus as He was brought face to face with these all but 
universal indications of human weakness, misery, and sin — 
of false religion and of hopes vain or vile. 

I. One of the commonest feelings attributed to Him is 
Pity * St. Paul tells his beloved Phillippians how he 
longed after them all “in the tender mercies of Jesus 
Christ and we are told again and again in the Gospels 
of the yearning compassion of Jesus over human beings in 

* 27 r'Xayxvi^ofiat. The word air'Adyxva, “tender compassion,” in several 
passages of the Authorized Version is with disastrous literalness rendered 
“ bowels,” 2 Cor. vi. 12, vii. 15 ; Phil. 1, 8 ; Col. iii. 12 ; Philem. 7. 12, 20 ; 
I John iii. 17. 


THE LIFE OF LIVES. 


308 

their afflictions. Thus, when He saw the multitudes in the 
cities and villages, “He was moved with compassion for 
them because they were harassed * and scattered, f as 
sheep when they have no shepherd.” And when the great 
multitudes had followed Him on foot out of their cities 
into a desert place, He had compassion on them, and 
healed their sick, and would not let them depart in hunger* 
but 

“ He fed their souls with bread from Heaven 
Then stayed their sinking frame.” \ 

Again, on the eastern side of the lake, after healing the 
lame, blind* dumb, maimed, and many whom they cast 
down at His feet, He said, “I have compassion on the 
multitude,” and, once more, miraculously provided for 
their needs. § He had compassion on Bartimaeus and his 
blind companion at Jericho ;|| and on the leper who came 
beseeching Him as He descended from the Mount of 
Beatitudes, and on the Demoniac Boy,** and on the 
widow of Nain.ff We cannot doubt that His heart was 
thrilled by incessant pity. We cannot fathom the depths 
of His sympathy. But this sorrow had its own alleviation, 
for it was the intensest joy to Him to relieve the sufferings 
of men. 

2. We are also told of the “ wonder ” or “ surprise” of 
Jesus. This was sometimes awakened by the happy dis- 
covery of faith in unexpected quarters,' as, for instance, in 
the Gentile Centurion at Capernaum.^ More often His 
wonder was mingled with deepening regret at the unbelief 

* eoKvXfiEvoc. The original meaning of the verb is “ to flay,” and then “ to 
worry.” 

t epifiivoi, “ outcast,” utterly neglected (by their proper teachers). 

% Matt. xiv. 14, 15 ; Mark vi. 34. 

§ Matt. xv. 32 ; Mark viii. 2. 

| Matt. xx. 34. Mark i. 41* 

** Mark ix. 22. 

ff Luke vii. 13. The word is not found in St. John’s Gospel. 

XX Matt. viii. 10; Luke vii. 9. J 


HIS GLADNESS AND SORROW. 


309 


of those who should have known Him, and who prevented 
all possibility of His doing many good works among them 
by their lack of faith. This was the case at His own city, 
Nazareth, and here it must have grieved him most.* 

3. Sometimes this surprise deepened into grief and 
anger . In the synagogue, when He was about to heal the 
man with the withered hand, and came into collision with 
the obstinate, conceited, sham-infallibility of the small- 
minded sticklers for religious convention, “ He looked 
round about on them with anger, being at the same time 
grieved at the callosity of their heart.’' f Jesus also felt 
most deeply the sting of thanklessness in those who had 
been the recipients of inestimable gifts. He sometimes 
felt as if all His mercies were “ falling into a deep, silent 
grave,” and He might have said : 

“ Blow, blow, thou winter wind, 

Thou art not so unkind 
As man’s ingratitude.” X 

This the only passage in which “ anger ” (opyfj) is directly 
attributed to Jesus ; and the only other scene in which His 
“grief" is spoken of is when in the Garden of Gethsemane 
His soul was exceeding sorrowful even unto death.” § 

4. It is interesting to observe that the verb “He was 
much displeased ,” or, more accurately, “ was indignant ” 
( r)yavaKTi]0e) } is used of our Lord but once (Mark x. 14). 
It is used of the Apostles, |* and of the Chief Priests, % and 
of the foolish ruler of the synagogue but only once of 
Christ. And what was it that thus kindled the indignation 
of the “ Blessed One” ? Simply the fact that the Apostles 
in their lack of sympathy had gone so far as to “ rebuke ” 

* Mark vi. 6. f Mark iii. , 5, GvXkvnovpevoq km ry Trnpaxjei. 

X See Luke xvii. 18. 

§ Tctpi/iVKo^. Matt. xxvi. 38 ; Mark xiv. 34. Comp. £KQap,[ 3 eioQcu , Mark 
xiv. 33. 

|| Matt. xx. 24, xxvi. 8 ; Mailt xiv. 4. 

** Luke xiii. 14. 


T[ Matt. xxi. 15. 


THE LIFE OF LIVES, 


310 

the mothers who brought to Jesus the little children whom 
He so tenderly loved. Nothing so deeply stirs the heart 
of the Lord, of love as the lack of love in those whom He 
loves. 

5. We find, however, a strong and expressive verb 
( ejj.fi pi jj.dojJ.ai ) used to indicate His self-restraint amid the 
impulses of holy indignation. * In the Authorised and 
Revised Versions it is rendered “ He groaned in the spirit ” 
(Vulg. infremuit spiritu ), and in the margin, “He was 
moved with indignation in the spirit.” f This feeling was 
caused by the heart-rending spectacle of the wailing of the 
Jews, and of Martha and Mary, for the dead Lazarus. It 
perhaps implies emotion “ at the sight of the momentary 
triumph of evil, as death , or the devil, who had brought sin 
into the world, and death through sin, which was here 
shown under circumstances of the deepest pathos.” 

6. It is followed by the word, “ He was troubled ,” or 
(more literally) “ He troubled Himself." This is a peculiar 
and striking expression. It is true that in other passages 
St. John merely says that our Lord “was troubled in 
Spirit;”^: but still the phrase “He troubled Himself” 
seems to imply His entire control over all the impulses of 
His own heart. His emotions never swept Him away, as 
ours do, with a resistless force, but were firmly under His 

* On this word, see Matt. ix. 30 ; Mark i. 43, xiv. 4, and comp. Lam. ii. 
6 (LXX.). It perhaps means that He put constraint on His Spirit in John 
xi. 33 - 

t John xi. 33. In Matt. ix. 31, it is rendered “ He strictly” (or “ sternly”) 
“ charged them,” where it is used of the injunction to the blind men not to 
spread abroad the news of their healing. So in Mark i. 43 of the leper. In 
Mark xiv. 4 it is used of the “ indignation ” of Judas and others against Mary 
of Bethany. In Classical Greek it is used of the roaring of a lion, or the snorting 
of a steed (.Tlsch. Theb. 461) ; and then of vehement threats (Ar. Eq . 855). 
Britne or Brimo was a name for Persephone, “the Angered.” See Trench, On 
the Miracles , p. 432. Euthymius explains the verb e/n^pi/jao/ui, by “astern 
look, accompanied by a shake of the head.” It is used by Aquila and Sym- 
machus to render Ps. vii. 11 ; Is. xvii. 13. 

\ John xiii. 21 (comp. xii. 27.) 


HIS GLADNESS AND SORROW. 


3 1 1 

own power. The emotion of Jesus shows that though He 
did not approve of the Stoic apathy, His feelings were 
always kept under the holy bonds of self-restraint.* “ Tur - 
batus est," says St. Augustine, “ quia voluit ." 

As regards the outward expressions of emotion, we are 
told once, and once only, that Jesus “ sighed deeply ," once 
only that He “ wept," once only that He was well-nigh 
“ stupefied with grief f once only that He “ wailed aloud." 

7. He sighed, or perhaps “ groanedf f at the sight of the 
helplessness of the blind man whom He healed, for He 
never looked with indifference on the spectacle of human 
infirmity. 

8. He shed “ silent tears " at the grave of Lazarus, J not 
only “ because He loved him ” — as the Jews surmised, for 
He knew that He was about immediately to recall him 
from the grave — but because He then saw, on every side of 
Him in the wailing Jews and the wailing family, the proofs 
of ruined earth and sinful man — the outcome of that first 
transgression which lost for man his primaeval Paradise, and 
“ brought sin into the world and all our woe." 

9. The word adr/fxoveiv, a word which expresses the 
crushing and stunning weight of overzvhelming sorrow, is 
only used of the Agony in the Garden. It swayed His 
human spirit with awful power. § 

10. He “ wailed aloud" (sHXavffev) but once, and again 
it was from the sense of profoundest pity. It was when, 
from the rocky plateau at the turn of the road from 
Bethany to Jerusalem, the glorious guilty city burst sud- 
denly upon His view, rising out of the deep umbrageous 
valley with its “imperial mantle of proud towers.” There 

* The uerptoiradeia of the Peripatetic philosophers. 

jf toTevai-ev , Mark vii. 34. Here only in the Gospels (but see Rom. viii. 23 ; 
2 Cor. v. 2, 4,), and dvaareva^aq r(p tt vevpan, Mark viii. 12. 

| edaKpvaev, John xi. 35. 

§ In Aquila this verb is used in Job xviii. 20; Ps. cxvi. 11. Jesus is only 
recorded to have used the word “soul” of Himself in Matt. xxvi. 38 ; John 
xii. 27. 


3 1 2 


THE LIFE OF LIVES, 


stood the Temple with its pinnacles and gilded roofs, re 
fleeting the morning light with such fiery splendour as to 
force the spectator to avert his gaze. And well might He 
wail aloud! Was not the city of Jerusalem the most 
** religious ” city in the the world ? Was it not wholly 
devoted to religion, or, at any rate, to religionism ? Could 
not its Temple Service number its white-robed array of 
40,000 priests, and its endless army Of attendant Levites? 
Did not the blast of silver trumpets announce daily its 
morning and evening sacrifices ? Did not the High Priest 
enter its Holy of Holies every year with the golden censer 
and the blood of Atonement in his hands? Were not some 
2,000,000 pilgrims, from every region of the world, with 
Gentile proselytes among them, streaming on that very day 
to its Paschal Feast? Ah, yes! there was sumptuous ritual 
enough, and more than enough, but no righteousness; 
abundant externalism, but no religion pure and undefiled ; 
and to His eyes the city was but as a glistering sepulchre, 
a hollow sham. He knew that the Priest and Levites, and 
Scribes and Pharisees, were, at that very moment, on the 
verge of the deadliest sin in all the world, and that that sin 
would involve the ultimate doom of them and of their 
whole nation, amid the death-throes of an agony more 
everwhelming than any which History has ever known. 
All this He knew^and for the only time in all His life 
He wailed aloud. For: 

“ There is an hour, and Justice marks the date 
For long-enduring Clemency to wait ; 

That hour elapsed, the incurable revolt 
Is punished — and down comes the thunder-bolt ! ” 

The scene which burst upon His view, and caused Him to 
stop the progress of the humble, joyful procession of those 
who loved Him, and believed in Him, and were so full of 
hope, was the most visible proof that He had “ come unto 
His own possession, and His own people received Him 




HIS GLADNESS AND SORROW. 313 

not.” * In the concentrated agony and bitterness of that 
conviction — the conviction that, in spite of His unbounded 
tenderness and infinite self-sacrifice, their House would so 
soon be left unto them desolate — He wailed aloud, f He 
would fain have gathered their children together as a hen 
gathereth her chickens under her wings ; but now they 
should be covered indeed, but by “ the desolating wing of 
abomination.” J 

He “wailed aloud” out of deep pity; but, afterwards, 
all the unspeakable agonies of His coming doom, and all 
the form of exquisite torture and brutal insult, could not 
wring from Him one single groan. Personal anguish and 
affliction could not affect even His humanity half so deeply 
as the sight of human degradation and the fore-knowledge 
of all the miseries which sin involves, and of all the deadly 
catastrophes which it precipitates so unceasingly on the 
heads of its miserable and deluded votaries. 

Forty years afterwards Jerusalem perished amid unspeak- 
able horrors of slaughter and conflagation ; and Josephus 
says that so awful were the calamities that fell on the guilty 
nation that “their misery was an object of commiseration 
not to Jews only; but even to those that hated them, and 
had been the authors of that misery.” § 

* ‘John i. II, ra Idia . . . 01 IdfoC. 

f There is a remarkable parallel to our Lord’s description of His tender 
yearning for Jerusalem in 2 Esdras i. 30-33. 

\ 1 Dan. ix. 27. 

§ 2 Jos. B.J. iii. 10, 8. 


CHAPTER XXIX. 


THE APOSTLES. 

4t I know Mine own, and Mine own know Me.” — John x. 14. 

Among the many decisive proofs of the Divine Suprem- 
acy and Eternal Mission of our Lord, one is the colossal 
work effected in the world by the twelve humble Galilean 
peasants who were the chosen few. In themselves they 
were nothing, and less than nothing. The lordly Priests 
and supercilious Pharisees of the Sanhedrin contemptuously 
set aside their greatest leaders — Peter and John — as igno- 
rant nobodies and common peasants,* only fit to be thrust 
into ward, and threatened, and on due opportunity got rid 
of. They were wholly outside the sphere of Roman notice. 
Over and over again their lack of apprehension, their 
unimaginative literalism, f their slowness of heart to believe, 
their Struggles for precedence, their disputes as to whi^h 
was the greatest,:): together with the dulness of their under- 
standing and the selfishness of their individual claims, 
wrung from the very depths of His heart — wrung from 
Him, in spite of His compassion and love for them, such 
sad complaints as, “ Why reason ye" because ye have no 
bread ? Perceive'ye not yet, neither understand ? Have ye 
your hearts yet hardened ? Having eyes see^ye not, and 
having ears hear ye not? Do ye not remember? How is 
it that ye do not understand ? ” 

* Acts iv. 13. The first five Apostles were of Bethsaida. 

t Our Lord’s remarks, “ I have food to eat that ye know not of,” “ Our 
friend Lazarus sleepeth,” “ Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees,” only called 
forth such wooden rejoinders as “ Hath any man brought Him aught to eat ? ” 
4 ‘ Lord, if he sleep he shall do well ” ; “ It is because we have no bread.” 

X Matt, xviii. 1-35 ; Mark ix. 33-50 ; Luke ix. 46^-50. 

314 


THE APOSTLES. 


3i5 


Oil one occasion He exclaimed to them, “ O faithless 
generation, how long shall I be with you ? how long shall I 
suffer you?”* He addressed them as “O ye of little 
faith.” He had to shame their worldly-mindedness by the 
rebuke, “Verily, I say unto you, except ye become as the 
little children, ye shall not enter into the Kingdom of 
Heaven.” f They did not grasp His abolition of the dis- 
tinction between clean and unclean meats. They could not 
comprehend His teaching about His death and earthly 
humiliation, and were too much awestruck to ask Him.J 
To their leader He had to say, “ Get thee behind me, Satan ; 
thou art a stumbling-block unto me, for thou mindest not the 
things of God, but the things of men ; ” § and again, Simon, 
Simon, Satan obtained you by asking, that he may sift you 
as wheat.” || James and John pained Him by their request 
for pre-eminent thrones, T and by the vindictive fierceness 
of their Elijah-spirit in desiring to call down fire on the 
the offending Samaritan village.** Even “ the disciple 
whom He loved ” incurred rebuke by forbidding the exer- 
ciser who used His name, but “ followed not them,” to cast 
out demons. There was something full of charm about the 
characters of Philip and Thomas, yet to one he had to say, 
“ Have I been so long time with you, and dost thou not 
knowTne, Philip ? ” ff and to Thomas, “ Be not faithless, but 
believing.” At the very last, in the hour of His over- 
whelming peril, His nearest and dearest could not even 
watch with Him for one hour, and at the terrible moment 
of His arrest “all the disciples forsook Him and fled.” 
And though He had so often indicated to them His Resur- 
rection from the dead, they treated the earliest reports of 
those who had seen Him as mere A/Jpof — mere idle talk. 

* Mark ix. 19. On these rebukes to the Apostles, see Mark iv. 13, 40, vi. 
52, viii. 17, 18, 26, 33, ix. 6-19, 32, 34, x. 24, 32, 35, xiv. 40. 


f Matt, xviii. 2. 

X Mark ix. 32. 

§ Matt. xvi. 23. 

|| Luke xxii. 31. 

Matt. xx. 22. 


** Luke ix. 55, 

ff John xiv. 9. 


XX John xx. 27. 


3 1 6 THE LIFE OF LIVES. 

It is no small testimony to the simple truthfulness of the 
Gospels that the Apostles and Evangelists thus humbly 
recorded their own low rank, imperfect education, and 
utter inadequacy, and handed down the memory of the 
rebukes which they drew upon themselves by their blank 
dulness, petty quarrels, and unworthy self-seeking.* * * § Yet 
because they loved Him, and believed in Him, and had 
remained with Him in His trials, and wandered with Him 
over the fields of Galilee, and in His flight to heathen lands, 
in poverty and hunger, and amid the manifold taunts, bru- 
talities, and scorn of men ; because they did not leave Him 
when men took up stones to stone Him in the Temple 
courts ; because they shared with Him the burning noon- 
tides and the homeless nights, He made them blessed 
above kings and wise men, and sent them forth to ennoble 
and regenerate the whole wide world. He spent much of 
the time of His ministry in training them for their high 
task. He made them His Apostles — Sheloochim . f He 
“ sent them forth ” to be His authorised delegates among 
mankind, His fishers of men. He called them His “ chil- 
dren/’ His “little flock,” His “friends” and “chosen 
companions,” “ the salt of the earth,” “ sons of light,” “ a 
city set upon a hill.”§ Men might despise them and call 


* Matt. iv. 1 8 , viii. 14, 26, xiii. 52, xiv. 27, 31, xv. 16, xvi. 9, xviii. I, xx;. 
20, 26, xxvi. 40 ; Mark xiv. 51. 

f The word “Apostle” is used thirty-six times by St. Luke, twenty-one 
times by St. Paul. Elsewhere only in Mark vi. 30 ; Matt. x. 2. In the LXX. 
the word only occurs in 1 Kings xiv. 6, where Abijah speaks of himself as com- 
missioned to deliver a stern message to the wife of Jeroboam. The Jews gave 
the name to the collectors of the Temple tribute. Christ Himself is called 
“ the Apostle and High Priest of our confession ” (Heb. iii. 1), as having been 
commissioned and sent forth by the Father. But the name is not confined to 
the Twelve. It is given to James, the Lord’s brother, and Matthias, and 
Paul, and Barnabas ; and in Rom. xvi. 7, Andronicus and Junia are said to 
be “ of note among the Apostles.” It also means “ Messenger ” in Phil, 
ii. 25. 

X John xii. 33. 

§ Luke xii. 4, 32 ; John xv. 14, 15 ; Matt. v. 13, 14 ; John xii. 36. 


THE APOSTLES. 


3i7 

them “ Beelzebul,”* “ as they had called their Master, but 
their infinite reward was that they became the soldiers, the 
servants, the beloved emissaries of the Lord of Glory. At 
His touch, like the gems on the oracular Urim, the character 
of each of them gleamed into the most heavenly lustre, and 
in a reality more lofty than the metaphor they sat on thrones, 
judging the tribes of Israel.f He gave them the fullest 
instruction on their commission, their trials, their consola- 
tion and their reward, and they were privileged more than 
any men to enter into the inmost heart and mind of the Son 
of Man. 

The lists of the Apostles, as given by the Evangelists, fall 
into three well-marked tetrads, ranged in the order of their 
nearness to Christ, and the special closeness of intimacy into 
which He admitted them.J 

1. The first tetrad consisted of the two pairs of brothers — - 
Simon and Andrew, James and John. They were the 
SeoXoyiHGJTaToi, the £h\8htg5v euXeuTOTepoi, the ecclesiola 
in ecclesia, the inmost circle of Christ’s friends. Andrew 
seems to have been the link of communication between Him 
and the others. § As the first of all the disciples to accept 
Jesus,|| he deserved the high honour of being among the 
most chosen, a position for which this fisherman of Beth- 
saida was well fitted by his humble, blameless, contempla- 
tive character. The other three of the first tetrad — Peter, 
James, and John, are sometimes called “the Pillar Apos- 

* The name “ Beelzebul ” (which is a better attested reading than “ Beelze- 
bub ”) is possibly a nickname of the demon-god of Ekron by the alteration of a 
letter. But some of the theories about it seem to be dubious. See Dr 
Cheyne, in Encycl. Bib. s. v. “ Baalzebub ” (2 Kings i. 2) means “ Lord of 
flies.” See p. 392. 

f Matt. xix. 28 ; Luke xxii. 30. 

x Matt. x. 2-4; Luke vi. 14-16 ; Mark iii. 16-19, vi. 7; Acts i. 13. The 
number Twelve is’symbolical of completion. It is the number of the Tribes of 
Israel. Ex. xxviii. 2 ; Rev. xxi. 14. 

§ On two occasions Philip and Andrew are brought together. John i. 44, 
vi. 8, xii. 22. 

J) John i. 40. 


3i8 


THE LIFE OF LIVES. 


ties.”* * * § They were, the only ones admitted to be with 
Christ at the raising of Jairus’ daughter, at the Transfigura- 
tion, and at Gethsemane.f James and John were the sons 
of Zebedee, and of Salome, who, it is nearly certain, was a 
sister of the Virgin -Mary. 

2. The second tetrad consisted of Philip, Bartholomew, 
Thomas, and Matthew. Philip may have been closely con- 
nected with Bartholomew ; and Thomas, whose surname 
was “ Didymus,” or “ the Twin,” may possibly have been a 
brother of Matthew.;]; 

3. The third tetrad consisted of two fathers and two 
sons — James, the son of Alphaeus, and his son Jude (also 
called Thaddaeus and Lebbaeus) ; § Simon the Zealot, and 
his son Judas Iscariot. If Alphaeus, or Clopas [ (Chalpai), 
was, as tradition says, a brother of Joseph, the carpenter of 
Nazareth, then James was our Lord’s first cousin, and Jude 
His first cousin once removed. It is therefore possible, and 
not improbable, that in this band of twelve there were four 
sets of brothers — Simon and Andrew; James and John; 
Philip and Bartholomew ; Matthew, Thomas, and James, 
sons of Alphaeus ; and that there were two sets of Apostles 
who stood to each other in the relation of father and son — 
namely, James, son of Alphaeus, and Jude ; Simon the 
Zealot and Judas Iscariot. It is also a deeply interesting 
and far from improbable view, that no less than six of the 
Apostles — James, John, Thomas, Matthew, James the Less, 
and Jude Thaddaeus — were cousins of our Lord.^f 

* From St. Paul’s expression in Gal. ii. 9. 

I Mark v. 37 ; Luke viii. 51 ; Matt. xvii. 1, xxvi. 37. 

\ John xi. 16 ; xxi. 2. 

§ Jude “ of James ” is sometimes called “ the brother of James,” but though 
the ellipse of the word “brother” is not unprecedented, it is much more 
probable that “ the son of James ” is intended. 

| John xix. 25. 

IT Some have supposed that Simon Iscariot was also a son of Clopas. If so 
fight of the Apostles were cousins of Christ. These conclusions are, however, 
very uncertain. 


THE APOSTLES. 


- 3i9 

They were all Galileans with the possible exceptions of 
Simon the Zealot and Judas Iscariot, who were, perhaps, 
Jews from the little town of Kerioth * * * § — Kuryetein — ten 
miles south of Hebron, f 

Of some of these Apostles we know next to nothing 
individually. No incident is recorded of Simon the Zealot,^ 
or of James the son of Alphaeus, called by St. Mark (xv. 40) 
“ the Little,” or “ Short of Stature.” Nothing is told us 
about Jude the son of James, except his one perplexed 
question at the Last Supper. § In spite of the nearnessfof 
Andrew to Jesus, little that is distinctive is told us about 
him, though he was the earliest disciple,! and one of the 
four who specially spoke to Jesus on Mount Olivet.^f Philip 
became one of the earliest disciples by the special call of 
Jesus, ** but, afterhis call (John i. 44), he is only mentioned 
by St. John in two little incidents — one being the interest- 
ing occasion when the Greeks came to him desiring to see 
Jesus; and another, the remark, “Lord show us the 
Father, and it s^fficeth us.” Matthew, or Levi, is only 
spoken of in connection with his office and his call, §§ but it 

*Josh. xv. 25. 

•f Simon is called 14 Iscariot,” by the MSS. B, C, G, L, in Johnvi. 7 r, x.iii.26 
The MS. D often reads, for “ Iscariot,’* airo mpiuTov. It is not impossible 
that Simon may have been a Galilean, who, for political reasons, fled south- 
wards to the remote and obscure Kerioth. 

\ 4 VLavavaioq does not mean “ the Canaanite,” or “ the man of Cana, ’ but 
44 the Zealot,” from 44 Kaenna *' to be hot,” Kineatic zeal (Ex. xx. 5). The 
name was taken from the dying words of Matthias, father of Judas Maccabaeus, 
44 Be ye zealous for the Law ” 1 Macc. ii. 27, 2 iv. 2. 

§ John xiv. 22. He is “ the three-named disciple. The name Lebhaeus 
is derived from leb> “ heart”; and the name Thaddaeus from thad , 44 bosom. 

It is another form of Theudas. James and jude were among the commonest 
Jewish names. 

|| John i. 40. IT Mark xiii. 3 - 

** John i. 43. There does not seem to be any traceable significance in the 
fact that Andrew and Philip have Greek names ; the Jews not ^infrequently 
adopted Hellenistic names. 

ff John xii. 20-22. 

34 John xiv. 8. 


Mark ii< 14* 


320 


THE LIFE OF LIVES. 


is an intensely significant fact that Christ should have 
chosen for His immediate follower on the one hand a man 
who had belonged to the fierce uncompromising national 
party of the Zealots, and on the other a man who had not 
only accepted the Roman domination, but held the despised 
and detested office of a Mokes , or toll-gatherer. The char- 
acter of Thomas, at once faithful and despondent, is 
depicted for us in a few delicate touches by St. John,* * * § 
but we see that even when he took the darkest view of the 
future he was still ready to die with Christ. 

In the case of Bartholomew, who was undoubtedly the 
same as Nathanael, we are only told that he was of Cana in 
Galilee ;f and that our Lord, when He gained him as a 
disciple by reading the inmost thoughts of his heart, 
described him as “ an Israelite indeed, in whom is no guile.’’ 
He was one of the happy band of seven to whom the Risen 
Lord appeared on the shores of the Sea of Galilee,;): “ when 
the morning was come.” 

Thus little do we know of the great majority of those 
whom Christ bade to “ be wise as serpents yet simple as 
doves”; to whom He promised the Spirit of His Father; 
and whom He bade to go forth and face the very worst that 
the world could do to them, certain that through Him they 
could do all things, and should receive at last their unimag- 
inable reward. § 

But is it not an immensely powerful ratification of all 
that we believe of Jesus as the Son of God, that, with 
instruments so feeble — by the agency of men humble, poor, 
unknown, insignificant in the judgment of the world — He 
should have subdued kingdoms, wrought righteousness, and 
altered the entire conditions and destinies of the race of 

* John xi. 16, xiv. 5, xx. 24-29, xxi. 2. 

t John xxi. 2. Nathaniel, like ** Theodor” and “Adeodatus,” means “ the 
gift of God.” Bartholomew means “ son of Tolmai.” 

% John xxi. 2. 

§ Matt. v. 12, x. 16, 22, 42. 


THE APOSTLES. 


321 


man ? Truly “ God chose the foolish things of the world 
that He might put to shame the wise ; and God chose the 
weak things of the world to confound the strong ; and the 
base and despised things of the world, and the things that 
are not, to bring to naught the things that are.” * 

'The poet makes Cassius say of the great Caesar: — 

“ Ye gods ! it cloth amaze me 
That man of such a feeble temper should 
So get the start of the majestic world, 

And bear the palm alone.’' 


But what works did the mighty Caesar accomplish which 
are distantly comparable in eternal significance to the reno- 
vation of mankind, the overthrow of the entire conditions 
of the ancient world, and of the ancient religions, by the 
agency of this handful of Galilean peasants? Is there any- 
thing parallel to this in the entire history of the world ? 

“Such is His will — He takes and He refuses, _ • ^ 

Chooseth Him ministers whom men deny ; 

Great ones nor mighty for His work He chooses — 

No ! Such as Paul, or Gideon, or I.” 

Whence did they derive this unequalled ] force, this 
amazing influence ? Not from themselves, but solely from 
the training of their Lord ; from the enthusiasm and the 
conviction which He had inspired ; from the memory of 
His sinlessness ; from His words of eternal life; above all, 
from the outpouring of His Spirit upon them at Pentecost. 
After that day, indeed, we lose sight of most of them, and 
the stories of their travels and their martyrdoms are only 
recorded by unauthenticated legend. Nevertheless, they 
sowed the little seed which sprang into the living and 
mighty tree of Christianity ; and — 

* 1 Cor. i. 27. 28. . ... 


322 


THE LIFE OF LIVES. 


“ The seed, 

The tiny seed men laughed at in the dark, 

Has risen, and cleft the soil, and grown a bulk 
Of spanless girth, that lays on every side 
A thousand arms, and rushes to the sun. 

There dwelt an iron nature in the grain ; 

The glittering axe was broken in men’s arms, 

Their arms were shattered to the shoulder-blade. 

Its enemies have fall’n, but this shall grow, 

A Night of Summer from the heat, a breadth 
Of Autumn, dropping fruits of power — and rolled 
With Music on the growing breeze of Time 
The tops shall strike from star to star, the fangs 
Shall move the stony bases of the world.” 

Apart from Christ they were feeble and insignificant. 
All their strength, all their wisdom, all their influence came 
from Him, and Him alone. 


,r • 

i 


CHAPTER XXX. 




i 

ST. PETER, ST. "JOHN, AND JUDAS. 

“ Let both grow'together until theharvest.” — Matt. xiii. 36. 

PERHAPS it may be said that though the rest of the 
Apostles remain but little known, two of them at least were 
men of unique endowments — Peter and John. I do not add 
the name of James, because this other “ Son of Thunder,” 
though he shared the early fiery impetuosity of his brother, 
is never mentioned in any incident apart from him. He 
was indeed the first Apostolic Martyr, as John was the last 
survivor of the band,* and the fact that he was chosen to be 
the head of the Infant Church in Jerusalem is one illustra- 
tion of his “ light and leading,” just as the traditions of his 
martyrdom illustrate the sweet and tender elements in his 
character.f Yet we cannot trace any results of the influ- 
-ence which he exercised which are at all comparable to 
those achieved by St. Peter, and St. John. 

The character of PETER — Simeon, or Simon, the son of 
John or Jonas \ — stands out before us with strange distinct- 
ness alike in its strength and in its weakness, in its elements 
of heroic fidelity and of deplorable fear, of entire self- 
sacrifice and of self-seeking vulgarism. The quick suscepti- 
bility and impetuous eagerness of this warm Galilean heart 
is again and again illustrated. The Fathers spoke of him 

* Acts xii. 2 ; John xxi. 22. 

f He was martyred A. D. 44 by Herod Agrippa I. The legends about his 
conversion of his accuser are found in Euseb. H. £. ii. Q (quoted from the 
Hypotyposes of Clem. Alex. Bk. vii.). 

X Symeon (Acts xv. 14), or “ Simon,” means “ hearer.” John is a shortened 
form of Johanan, “the mercy of God” (John i. 42, xxi. 16), and is another 
form of Jona. 


323 


3 2 4 


THE LIFE OF LIVES. 


as “the symbol of practical life,” whereas St.John was 
“ the symbol of theoria ,” the contemplative life. St. 
Chrysostom calls him “the ever-impassioned, the coryphaeus 
of the choir of the Apostles.” * He it was who, when so 
many were deserting Christ, said, “ Lord, to whom shall we 
go? Thou hast the words of eternal life.” He it was who 
justified the name of Kepha which Christ gave him, by* 
earning chief prominence among the Apostles, often speak- 
ing in their name, answering when all were addressed, f and 
taking a marked lead among them after the Ascension.;); 
He it was who formulated the great confession, “Thou art 
the Christ, the Son of the Living God.” § Yet immediately 
afterwards he incurred sternest rebuke as “ a Satan,” and a 
stumbling-block. He accepts the early call of Christ, but 
at the second call cries, “ Depart from me, for I am a sinful 
man, O Lord.” He wishes to walk to meet his Master over 
the stormy waters, yet immediately he began to do so his 
faith fails, and he cries out, “ Lord, save me: I perish!” 
He refuses Christ’s act of infinite tenderness in kneeling to 
wash his feet, yet immediately afterwards cries, “ Lord, not 
my feet only, but also my hands and my head.” He strikes 
the first and only blow for his Master at Gethsemane, yet 
the very same night, at the questioning of a servant-maid, 
denies Him with oaths and curses. He does not recognise 
Christ on the shore after the Resurrection so soon as John, 
but the moment he does so he gifds his’ fisher’s coat about- 
him, and plunges into the sea to swim to Him. He is the 
first, with consummate boldness, to baptise, and eat and 
drink with, a Gentile convert, yet long afterwards, at 
Antioch, afraid of “certain who came from James,” with 
timid lack of candour, he belies his former courage in 

* Chrys. Horn. liv. 

f Matt. xvi. 16, xix. 27; Mark viii. 29; Luke xii. 41, xxii. 31. Comp. 
Matt. xvii. 24, 25, xxvi. 35, 37. 

% Acts i. 15, ii. 14, iv. 8, v. 29. 

§ His brother Andrew had from the first spoken to him of Jesus as the 
Messiah, or Anointed of God (John i. 41, 49, vi. 69). 


325 


PETER, JOHN, AND JUDAS. 

mixing freely with the Gentiles, and carries Barnabas away 
with him in his dissimulation. This surely is sufficient to 
show that if he, individually , was “ the Rock ” on which 
Christ built His Church, the rock was one which was often 
as shifting sand ; and that the expression on which so huge 
a superstructure of fraud, tyranny, and superstition has 
been built, referred only to the fact that, in reward for his 
quick insight and bold confession, he was regarded as being 
in some ways a leader — though by no means an exclusive 
or finally authoritative leader — among the Apostles, 45, and 
that to him was granted the glorious prerogative of prepar- 
ing for the evangelisation of the whole world by being the 
first to admit the Gentiles into the fold of Christ’s Church. 
But it was only in this secondary and metaphorical sense 
that Christ built His Church on Peter as a rock ;f for else- 
where we are told that the Church is built on the founda- 
tion, not of one erring man, but of all the Apostles and 
Prophets, and still more on Christ Himself, who is at once 
the Foundation and the Chief Corner-stone.^: We may well 
ask with David, and with Isaiah, “ Who is a rock, save our 
God?” and say with St. Paul, “Other foundation can no 
man lay than that which is laid, which is Christ Jesus.” § 

* As is clear from John xxi. 19-23 ; Luke xxii. 24-26 ; Gal. ii. 9, etc. The 
building of the claims of the Church of Rome on this phrase is, says Dean 
Plumptre, “ but the idlest of fantastic dreams, fit only to find its place in that 
Limbo of Vanities which contains, among other abortive or morbid growths, 
the monstrosities of interpretation.” 

f This passage is the only one in the Gospels in which Christ uses the word 
** Church ” (Heb. Kahal ), for in Matt, xviii. 17, the word only means the local 
congregation. (Comp. Acts xix. 32, 41.) Everywhere else He speaks not of 
His “ Church ” but of His “ Kingdom.” 

\ 1 Cor. iii. 11. 

§2 Sam. xxii. 32 ; Is. xxviii. 16, xliv. 8 ; 1 Cor. iii. 11, x. 4. In the Old 
Testament the metaphor of a Rock is applied always to God, not to a man 
{Deut. xxxii. 4, 18; Ps. xviii. 2, 31, 46; Is. xvii. 10; etc.). In Is. li. 1 
Abraham is called “ the rock ” ( Tsur ) whence Israel was hewn. St. Paul cer- 
tainly recognised no supremacy of Peter, for he calls himself “not a whit 
behind the very chiefest Apostles” (2 Cor. xi. 5, xii. 11), and he openly 
rebuked Peter for timid unfaithfulness (Gal. ii. 11). 


THE LIFE OF LIVES. 


326 

Nor, in any case, has the privilege granted to St. Peter the 
most distantly remote bearing on the colossal usurpations 
of the Church of Rome. 

St. John’s faults — his jealousy of “outsiders,”* his 
vindictiveness, f his passion to have the pre-eminence J — 
are set forth with the same unvarnished faithfulness as 
those of St. Peter; yet it will be his glory to all time to 
have been “the disciple whom Jesus loved,” the disciple 
who, at the Last Supper, leaned his young head upon His 
breast. To the last, as is proved by the rich traditions 
respecting his later^years, he retained his burning energy, 
his impetuous horror against wickedness and apostasy 
which gained from Christ the name of “ Sons of Thunder ” 
(Beni Regeshf) for the brothers whose life was often as 
lightning and their words as thunder.*! It is in the Apoc- 
alypse, in his Gospel, and in his Epistles that we learn to 
understand the depth, force, and loveliness of this 
disciple’s character ; — his rare combination of meditative- 
ness and passion, of strength and sweetness, of imperious 
force and most tender affection. We lose sight of him for 
many years, which he doubtless spent in preparation for the 
work which he would have to do when the call came, and in 
devoted care of the Virgin Mother, whom Christ had so 
specially entrusted to his charge. || Who can measure the 

* Mark ix. 38. f Luke rx. 54. \ Mark x. 35-45. 

§ The Greek Church calls John PpovTfyuvog, “the Thunder-voiced.” The 
form of the word Boanerges is perplexing and difficult of explanation, as it can 
hardly be a phonetic corruption of Beni Regesk. It never came into common 
use. See Dalman, Die Worte Jesu, 39. 

j| In his own Gospel h$ generally alludes to himself as “ the other disciple ” 
fxviii. 15, xx. 2, 3), or “the disciple whom Jesus loved” (xiii. 23, xix. 26). 
The account of the origin of the Gospel, quoted r by Eusebius {H. E. vi. 15), is 
very interesting. I have not thought it necessary to enter once more into the 
genuineness of St. John’s Gospel. It may be regarded as finally established by 
modern criticism. The internal evidence in its favour is overwhelming ; and 
as for external evidence, we know that, in the second century, it is attested by 
Irenpeus (a disciple of Polycarp) at Lyons ; by Tertullian at Carthage ; by 
Clement at Alexandria ; by the Muratorian fragment at Rome ; by the Peshito 


PETER, JOHN, AND JUDAS. 327 

value of the elements which he contributed to the age-long 
dominance of Christianity by the burning Apocalypse, and 
the spiritual Gospel and Epistles, in which he seems to be 
soaring heavenwards on the wings, now of the eagle which 
has been chosen for his appropriate symbol, and now of the 
dove which is covered with silver wings and her feathers 
like gold ? 

In the Apocalypse we still trace the passionate energy of 
his convictions; in the Gospel they have become as the 
lightning which slumbers in the dewdrop. “The Son of 
Thunder,” says Weiss, “ became, through the training of 
Spirit, refined and matured into a mystic, in whom the 
flames of youth had died down into the glow of a holy 
love.” * 

It is strange — amid this little band of men who, in spite 
of their original weaknesses, were noble and pure-hearted 
enthusiasts, — to find the dreadful, sullen, saturnine figure 
of JUDAS, “who became a traitor” f — 

“ That furtive mien, that scowling eye ; 

Of hair that red and tufted fell.” 

We shudder at the depth of wickedness involved in such a 
crime ; at the desperate blindness and callosity of heart, 
mingled with almost demoniac madness, which, after 
belonging to that holy fellowship, after spending those 
years with the sinless Son of Man, after hearing His words 
of eternal wisdom, after such close familiarity with the 

Version in Syria ; by the old Latin in Africa ; by Tatian in his Diatcssaron , 
etc. See Lightfoot, Contemp. Rev. Feb., 1876 ; Westcott, Inlrod. to St. 
John's Gospel ; Sanday, The Fourth Gospel ; Watkins (Ellicott’s New Testa 
inent Commentary , i. 377). 

* Nothing can be made of the legend that Janies and John were of High 
Priestly descent, or that they wore the ireraXov (Ex. xxviii. 36 ; Euseb. H. E. 
iii. 31 ; Epiphan. Hcer xxix. 4). For the later legends of St. John, see Tert. 
De Praescr. Hcer. 36 ; Iren. c. Hcer. v. 30. 

f Luke vi. 16, og eyevero npodoTiK. In the Apocryphal Gospel of the Infancy, 
Judas, as a boy, was a demoniac who was healed by the presence of the Boy 
Jesus. 


THE LIFE OF LIVES. 


328 

divine beauty of His daily life — could for “thirty pence '* 
betray Him into the scheming, tyrannous, greedy hands of 
Priests and Pharisees ! All that we can suppose was that 
Judas was not always “ the traitor.” Could not Christ read 
the hearts of men? Undoubtedly He could.* He could 
see — 

“ In the green the mouldered tree, 

And ruined towers as soon as built.” 

The depraved, hardened sinner is a very different being 
from the youth who has not yet been stereotyped in 
wickedness, and who still has within him the boundless 
possibilities of good. We might well exclaim, “ O quam 
dissimiles hie vir, et ille puer!" The Judas whom Christ 
.^hose among His twelve was not yet the same man as he 
“ who also became a betrayer.” We only see him in the 
poisonous crimson flower and deadly fruitage of his 
wickedness, in the concentrated degradation of slavery 
to a mean temptation. But he was once an innocent 
child ; he was once, perhaps, a bright-hearted boy,f] an 
ardent youth, capable of noble aspirations, not yet 
possessed by the seven devils of a brooding sullenness 
and an unresisted temptation. 

“ We are not worst at once. The course of evil 
Begins so slowly, and from such slight source, 

An infant’s hand might stem the breach with clay. 

But let the stream grow wider, and Philosophy, 

Aye, and Religion too, may strive in vain 
To stem the headlong current.” 

Judas remains to all time an awful incarnate warning 
against the peril of yielding to a besetting sin. We are 
left to surmise the incidents of his career. If he was 
the son of Simon the Zealot, he may have shared as a 

* See Matt. xii. 25 ; Mark. ii. 8, xii. 15 ; John i. 43, 48, ii. 25, vi. 64, 70. 
f No weight whatever can be attached to the fictions in the Arabic Gospel of 
the Infancy (xxv.). 


329 


PETER, JOHN, AND JUDAS. 

youth the wild impulses of patriotism, and the glowing 
anticipations of a temporal Messiah — who should shatter 
the yoke of Rome, and restore the kingdom to Israel — 
which fired the untamed hearts of Judas of Gamala, and 
of his sons and followers. If so, we can imagine how the 
gradual chilling and final quenching of such Messianic 
hopes had worked in his heart side by side with the 
growth of a petty, dishonest greed, fostered by the fact 
that he carried the bag* which contained the little 
common store of Jesus and His poor Apostles. The heart 
of Judas was one 

“ Which fancies, like to vermin in the nut. 

Have fretted all to clust and bitterness.” 

To this was added the fact that he could not be unaware 
that Christ saw through him, penetrated the guilty secrets 
of his heart long before his fellow-disciples had learnt to 
do so. He could not miss the significance of some of the 
allusions by which Christ strove to check him in his awful 
career.f The climax came when he was robbed of the 
chance of getting, and partly appropriating, “ the three 
hundred denarii ” for which the precious pistic spikenard 
might have been sold, with which Mary of Bethany with 
glorious wastefulness anointed the head and feet of the 
Lord whom she loved. It was the spasm of dreadful 
disappointment thus caused to his avarice which drove him 
to the consummation of his crime. He felt that, at all 
costs, he must indemnify himself— were it only by thirty 

* John xii. 6, y?Moa6ico/Liov (in Luke xxii. 35, flaAAavriov.) A glossokomon , 
according to Hesychius, is a box in which flute-players kept the tongue (or 
reed) of their flutes. It is used by, the LXX. in 2 Chron. xxiv. 8 ; by Aquila 
in Ex. xxxvii. 11. 

f “ Did not I choose you the twelve, and, one of you is a devil? ” (chd/foAoc) 
John. vi. 70. Probably the expression in the Aramaic was less f ear . 

ful, but Judas must have felt that Christ’s warnings against avarice (Matt. vi. 
19-21, xiii. 22, 23 ; Mark x. 25 ; Luke xii. 15, xvi. 11) had a special meaning 
for him. 


330 


THE LIFE OF LIVES. 


shekels — for the loss of a larger chance of gain.* * * § The 
Priests weighed out to him the thirty pieces of silver, and 
we know all that followed. We know how Christ washed 
the traitor's feet; how, in answer to the cold, formal ques- 
tion, “ Rabbi, is it I ? ” He whispered to him the dis- 
covery of his guilt ;f how He privately indicated to John 
and Peter that He was conscious of the man’s nefarious 
plot ; how the traitor led the Roman soldiers, and Temple- 
guard, and High Priest’s servants to Gethsemane and 
said, “ Rabbi, Rabbi, hail ! ” and^ covered Him with kisses;;): 
we know, lastly, of the awful, overwhelming revulsion of 
feeling, the sickening horror with which he became aware 
of the transcendent deadliness of the crime into which he 
had fallen ; the frantic passion of remorse with which, 
when he realised the anguish to. which his foul deed had 
doomed his Lord, he flung the hated silver — which now 
seemed to burn his hands — upon the Temple floor, and 
rushed away to hideous suicide. His crime kindled in his 
heart a lurid glare by which he first realised its awful 
enormity. “ Perfecto demum scelere, magnitudo ejus intel- 
lecta est ,” as the Rom^n historian so strikingly observes.§ 
The very horror, intensity, and hopelessness of his remorse 
may perhaps help us to gauge what his better feelings 
must once have been. Who can say whether after he had 
gone to “ his own place,” he may not, even in that abyss, 
have been reached by the Divine tenderness and pardoning 
compassion of his Lord, and, like the healed demoniac, 
have sat at His feet at last, clothed and in his right mind ? 
A son of perdition || indeed he was ; in the most terrible o»f 
earthly senses “ he perished ” because he was “ a son of 

* Thirty shekels only amounts to £$ 13s., and was the lowest price of a 
slave (Ex. xxi. 32). But vast crimes have been committed for far smaller sums. 

f Matt. xxvi. 25. 

£Matt. xxvi. 49. 

§ Tac. Ann. xiv. 15., Comp. Juv. Sat. xiii. 23$. 

| John xvii. 12. 


33i 


PETER, JOHN, AND JUDAS. 

perishing”: but it is doubtful whether our Lord meant to 
pronounce over him the terrible sentence that “ it would 
have been better for him never to have been born ” ; for 
the curious order of the words, and the context, make it 
at least possible that what our Lord meant was, “ Good 
were it for Him (the Son of Man) if that man had not 
been born.” f 

\ This more merciful view of the ultimate destiny of Judas was taken long 
ago by Origen ( Tract . in Matt. 35) and Theophanes (Suicer, s. v. ’lovdag). 


CHAPTER XXXI. 


THE APOSTOLIC COMMISSION. ' 

“ We are ambassadors, therefore, on behalf of Christ ... we 
beseech you on behalf of Christ, be ye reconciled to God. — 2 Cor. v. 20. 

It was to His little band of Apostles that Jesus gave His 
great Commission, and on them He conferred the rich spiritual 
prerogatives metaphorically expressed in the words, “ The 
Keys of the Kingdom of Heaven/’ and the powers to “ loose ” 
and “ bind,” to “ remit ” and “ retain ” sins. It was not till 
after His death — it was not till their hearts had been filled with 
the Spirit and their brows encircled with hovering flame that 
they sprang to their full spiritual stature, and began first to un- 
derstand the words of Christ and their full significance.* Nor 
must we forget that from two — it may practically be said, from 
three of them — emanated the Four Gospels which contain the 
richest treasures of our knowledge of Christ. The Gospel of 
St. Matthew, of which the nucleus seems to have been (as 
Papias tells us) a collection of the Sayings ( Logia ) of Christ, 
was perhaps the earliest which became current, and may have 
assumed its present form some thirty-seven years after the 
Crucifixion . 1 It is the Gospel for the Jew, the Gospel of the 
Messiah, the Gospel of the Past, the Gospel of Prophecy ful- 
filled. The Gospel of St. Mark, as we know alike from internal 
evidence and ancient tradition, in its brief, vivid, practical de- 
lineation, reflects the memories of St. Peter, and is the Gospel 
for the Roman, the Gospel of the Present. , The Gospel of St. 
Luke reflects the mind of St. Paul, and is the Gospel for the 
Greeks. The Gospel of St. John is “ the Spiritual Gospel,” the 
last utterance of the last survivor, and, of “ the best beloved,” 

* John ii. 22, xii. 16, xiii. 7, xiv. 7, xx. 9. 
f See Weiss, Life of Christ , p. 39. 


332 


THE APOSTOLIC COMMISSION. 


333 


of the Apostolic band, who could look back over nearly a cen- 
tury, and could interpret the Gospel of Eternity in its final 
meaning. It is the Gospel of the Church of all time. 

I have already mentioned that Christ only once used the 
word “ Church.” The exclusiveness which is too often con- 
nected with the boast of “ Churchman-ship ” — the contemptuous 
tone towards others so frequently adopted by those who de- 
light to call themselves “ Good Churchmen ” — is entirely alien 
from the teaching of Christ. He described Himself as coming 
to establish a Kingdom in which all are alike the subjects of 
the one King. And by His Church He did not mean this or 
that body of exclusive claimants, but all the many folds in the 
one true flock ; in the language of our Prayer Book, “ the 
blessed company of all faithful people ; ” “ all true Christians 
dispersed throughout the world ; ” all who love our Lord Jesus 
Christ in sincerity and truth ; “ all who in every place call on 
the Name of our Lord Jesus Christ, both theirs and ours.” 

1. What is called “ the power of the keys ” is a symbol only 
explicable by its current meaning among the Jews. The key 
was not a sacerdotal emblem. It was a sign of authority ,, 1 and 
in the highest sense that Key was retained by Christ Himself . 2 
But it was granted to Peter — as one of the Apostles 3 — because, 
just as the Jewish Scribes were supposed to have the key of the 
treasuries of wisdom and knowledge stored up in Scripture and 
in tradition, so the Apostles were authorised to admit men into 
the kingdom of Christ, and to lay open before them its eternal 
riches. But the keys were not entrusted to Peter individually. 
4i Claves data sunt,” says St. Augustine, “ non uni sed unitati .” 
The keys, the powers to loose and bind, the power to remit 
and retain sin, refer neither to individual priests nor to sacer- 
dotal caste, but to the didactic, the legislative, and the prophetic 
powers of the whole Church of God. 

2. The power “ to loose ” and “ bind ” was also a familiar 
Jewish metaphor of the day, which was not applied to Priests, 
but only to Rabbis. “ To loose ” was to remove the yoke of 

*Is. xxii. 22. Comp. Luke xii. 41, 42. f Rev. iii. 7. 

\ Matt. iii. 52, xvi. 19, xviii. 18. § See Hooker, Eecl. Pol. iv. 4, 1, 2. 


334 


THE LIFE OF LIVES. 


some legal or traditional precept : “ to bind ” was to enforce its 
obligatoriness. It was a Jewish saying that “ Hillel loosed ” 
and “ Shammai bound,” because in some respects Hillel and his 
school were inclined to take a lenient view of traditional ob- 
ligations, whereas Shammai insisted on their most punctilious 
observance. In the days of the Primitive Church the Apos- 
tles were naturally appealed to, in all uncertain questions, to 
decide what rules of Judaism were still incumbent on Chris- 
tians, and what rules were now abrogated. St. James and the 
Council of Jerusalem exercised the powers both of “ loosing ” 
and of “ binding ” in their decisions about what was necessary 
for the Gentile Churches ;* and while Paul frequently “ bound,” 
he exercised the prerogative of " loosing ” on a stupendous 
scale when he pronounced the Gentile Church to be free from 
the yoke of the Levitic law, and — taking the ordinance to which 
the Jews attached the most immense importance — declared 
thrice over that “ circumcision is nothing, and uncircumcision 
is nothing ” but “ a new creature ; ” but “ keeping the com- 
mandments of God ; ” but “ faith energising by love.” 

3. A still loftier prerogative was conferred by the words 
spoken, not to the Apostles only — this is a point of consummate 
importance, which is habitually ignored — but to the disciples 
generally, as we are expressly told by St. Luke — “ to the eleven, 
and those that were with them.” As my Father hath sent Me 
(<x7t£ araXne) , Christ said, “even so am I sending ( nk}X7iGL ? 
you ; ” and then, after breathing on them, He added, “ Take ye 
the Holy Spirit; whosoever sins ye forgive they are forgiven 
unto them ; whosesoever sins ye retain they are retained.”* 

Dangerous errors have risen in the Church from the failure 
to observe that the commission was given, not to Apostles only, 
not to ordained ministers only, but to the zvhole Christian com- 
munity; — to the Church as a Church, not to any class or caste 
within it. It is only by the gift of the Spirit, only by the pro- 
phetic insight which the Spirit can alone bestow, that the Church 
can “ remit ” or “ retain ” sins by declaring the conditions on 
which God remits or retains them, and deciding whether those 
* Acts xv. 19. f 1 John xx. 23 4 Lirke xxiv. 47. 


THE APOSTOLIC COMMISSION. 


335 


conditions do or do not exist. It is “ Ye ” — the Christian Com- 
munity — who alone possess this power, and it is exercised on 
men collectively rather than on individual sinners. Christ con- 
ferred upon the church the right, not indeed of deciding 
whether this or that man shall be saved or lost, but of declar- 
ing what men she can admit into, or reject from, her com- 
munity. The claim of “ priests ” that they can absolve from 
sin entirely perverts the true meaning of Christ’s words. All 
that priests can do is to state — not by their individual authority, 
but solely in agreement with the mind of the whole Church — 
the conditions on which sin can alone be forgiven. Those con- 
ditions the Church may set forth.. They are the conditions of 
sincere repentance and genuine amendment. If any one fulfil 
these conditions, he not only will be, but is forgiven, and has 
everlasting life. If a man have not fulfilled those conditions 
he is not forgiven, though all Popes and priests should pro- 
nounce their- absolutions over him, and call him “Saint.” 
Apart from a miraculous power of reading the heart, any “ ab- 
solution ” which is not simply declaratory and hypothetic is a 
false pretence, founded on the perversion of a phrase which 
has no such meaning — a pretence more meaningless than the 
idle wind. Who can forgive sins but God only ? 

The following remarks of Bishop Westcott should be care- 
fully considered by those who, on this subject, have been mis- 
led into false conclusions by relying on an isolated and misin- 
terpreted phrase, and who pay no attention to certain truths. 
“ The main thought is that of the reality of the power of abso- 
lution from sin granted to the Church, and not of the particular 
organisation through which the power is administered. There 
is nothing in the context to shoiv that this 'gift was confined to 
any particular group (as the Apostles) among the whole com- 
pany present. The commission, therefore, must be regarded 
properly as the commission of the Christian Society, and not as 
that of the Christian Ministry. As the promise formerly given 
to the Society (Matt, xviii. 18) gave the power of laying down 
the terms of fellowship, so this gives a living and abiding power 
to declare the fact and conditions of forgiveness. The con- 


336 


THE LIFE OF LIVES. 


ditions refer to character (Luke xxiv. 47). The gift and the 
refusal of the gift are regarded in relation to classes and not in 
relation to individuals. It is impossible to contemplate an ab- 
solute individual exercise of the pozver of ‘retaining’ ; so far it 
is contrary to the scope of the passage to seek in it a direct au- 
thority for the absolute individual exercise of the ‘ remitting ’ 
At the same time the exercise of the power must be placed in 
the closest connection with the faculty of Spiritual discernment 
consequent upon the gift of the Holy Spirit.” * It does not 
need much observation to see that priests, in all ages, have 
been in no respect more richly endowed with anything which 
can be called “ spiritual discernment ” than whole classes of 
men whom they despise. 


Bishop Westcott on John xx. 23. 


CHAPTER XXXII. 


ORDER OF EVENTS IN OUR LORD'S LIFE. 

“ And so the word had breath, and wrought 
With human hands the creed of creeds, 

In loveliness of perfect deeds 
More strong than all poetic thought.” 

—Tennyson. 

I shall not here enter into the difficult details of chronology 
on which I have already spoken in my “ Life of Christ,” and in 
the notes on St. Luke’s Gospel. After the mass of close in- 
vestigation which has been devoted to this question, it may be 
regarded as probable , even if it cannot be established as certain, 
that our Lord was born in the winter of b. c. 4. Our present 
mode of calculation, which fixes the birth four years later, was 
only introduced by the Abbot Dionysius Exiguus, in the sixth 
century (a. d. 525), and was founded on the necessarily imper- 
fect knowledge of his day.f The question is an open one, for 
there is no agreement in the traditions of the Church as to 
either the year, the day, or the month of our Lord’s Advent.* 
It is still a stranger fact, and one even more to be regretted, 
that there is no agreement among Christian scholars as to the 

*On Luke iii. 1, p. 125 (Greek edition). . 

f The Biblical data on which the date of the Nativity depends are found in 
Luke iii. 1, 2 (where a sixfold date is given), 23 ; John ii. 13, 20. Owing, 
however, to the difficulty of obtaining absolutely certain information, various 
dates have been fixed upon. There have been wide differences of opinion. 
Thus Pearson and Hug fix the Nativity in B. c. 1 ; Scaliger in b. C. 2 ; 
Baronius, etc., B. c. 8 ; Ussher and Petavius in B. c. 5 ; Adeler and Sancle- 
mente in B. c. 7. (See Archbishop Thomson in Smith’s Diet, of the Bible , ii., 
p. 1701.) But the opinions of most authorities now agree in the date B. C. 4 
(Lamy, Bengel, Auger, Wieseler, Cresswell, etc.). The main element in the 
decision is the death of Herod in the early part of A. u. c. 750, in March or 
April, B. c. 4. 

X Lichtenstein in Herzog, Beal. Encycl. s. v. “ Jesus Christ.” 


337 


338 


THE LIFE OF LIVES. 


length of our Lord’s ministry. Many of the Fathers, f building 
their conclusion wholly without reason on the phrase of Isaiah, 
“ the acceptable year of the Lord,” J confine the period of His 
active work to a single year. Others consider that the min- 
istry lasted one and a half years, or two years and one or two 
months. But most inquirers are now agreed that our Lord’s 
public work extended over about three and a half years, or, at 
any rate, three years and some weeks or months. || The ques- 
tion is further complicated by the opinion of some of the 
Fathers that our Lord, at His death, was between forty and 
fifty years old. This is a mere mistake of tradition, based on 
the surprised question of the Jews (in John viii. 57, “Thou 
art not yet fifty years old, and hast thou seen Abraham ? ” On 
this verse, Chrysostom Eythymius, and others adopt the read- 
ing “ forty,” which, again, in all probability is a mere conjec- 
tural correction of the text. It is a curious fact that Irenseus * 
— the scholar of Polycarp, who is said to have received the tra- 
dition directly from St. John — says that our Lord was about 
fifty at the time of His passion. Such an error is, however, 
easily accounted for by mistaken inferences from this text. 
The view that our Lord lived fifty years would be subversive 
to all our records.* The Jews only mentioned fifty years as a 

* Eusebius {H. E. iii. 24) Clemens of Alexandria {Strom. 1, xxi.). Origen 
{Principe iv. 5) says, eviavrov mi ttov ml o?Jyovg firjvag edidat-ev, but does not 
seem to be quite consistent with himself {c. Cels, ii., p. 29) in Matt. xxiv. 15. 
So, too, Tert. c. Jud 8 ; Lactant, iv. 10 ; Aug. De Civ. Dei , xxviii. 54 ; 
Gieseler, Ch. Hist. E. T. 1, 55; Hase, Leben Jesu , p. 21. But Melito, 
Irenaeus, and others take a different view. This opinion has, however, been 
strongly, if unsuccessfully, supported by Mr. Browne in his Or do Sceclorum (pp. 

342-391)- 

f Is. Ixi. 2. 

% Some have seen a reference to this in Luke xiii. 7. 8. “ Tres. Numurus 

quodammodo decretorius. Tertium docendi annum incipiebat Dominus, ut 
vera docet Harmonia Evangelistarum. — Bengel. 

§ c. Hcer . ii. 22, 5. 

|| I am bound, however, to note, though with surprise, that Bishop Westcott 
seems to consider such an opinion possible. He says {ad loc.) t “ However 
strange it may appear, some such a view is not inconsistent with the only fixed 
historic dates which we have with regard to the Lord’s life, the date of the 
birth, His baptism, and the banishment of Pilate.” 


EVENTS IN OUR LORD’S LIFE. 


339 


round number for complete manhood. i Hippolytus was a pu- 
pil of Iranaeus, yet even he mentions thirty-three as the age at 
which our Lord died ; and Eusebius, Theodoret, Jerome, and 
other Fathers agree with him.§ 

The main elements on which we must decide what was the 
length of our Lord’s ministry are derived from St. John, who 
groups his entire narrative round the Jewish festivals, to which 
he makes six allusions. 

1. “ The Passover of the Jews ” (xi. 13). 

2. “A [or the] Feast of the Jews” (v. 1). 

3. “ The Passover, the Feast of the Jews ” (vi. 4).* * * § 

4. “ The Feast of the Jews, the Tabernacles ” (vii. 2). 

5. “The Feast of the Dedication” (The Enccenia) (x. 22). 

6. “ The Passover of the Jews ” (xi. 55). 

It may, then, be regarded as certain that St. John mentions 
three Passovers. This necessarily implies a ministry of two 
years; and if (as seems probable) there was one Passover dur- 
ing the ministry which our Lord did not attend, or if the un- 
named feast of John v. 1 was this Passover, we should have 
clear proof that the ministry lasted three years at least.f But 
as St. John distinctly mentions the Great Feasts by name, it is 
unlikely that he should not have called this Feast by its name if 
it was either the Passover or the Feast of Tabernacles. It was 
possibly the Feast of the Purim, which he would not be likely 
to mention by name, as it was (unlike the Enccenia) unfamiliar 


* The Levites were to serve in the Temple “from thirty years old and 
upwards, even until fifty years old ” (Num. iv. 3). 

f Euseb. H. E. i. 10. See Wordsworth ad loc. 

\ Although to Tzaax a is conjecturally doubted by some, and even by Westcott 
and Hort ( Greek Testament , pp. 77-81) it is unquestionably genuine, for it is 
found “ in every known MS., whether of the original Greek or of the versions." 
I have not dwelt on the arguments drawn from incidental notices like John iv. 
35, vi. 10 ; Mark vi. 39, etc. As to the years A. d. no conclusion can as yet be 
regarded as at all proven. 

§ In John v. 1 there is another reading, “ the Feast ” (which would mean the 
Passover or the Tabernacles), which was found in MSS. as early as the second 
century, and is the reading of C, L, but as it is not found in A, B, D, in 
Origen, and in many later copies, it is probably spurious. 


340 


THE LIFE OF LIVES* 


to the Greeks. This is inferred by many commentators from a 
comparison of John iv. 35 : “ Say ye not, There are yet four 
months , and then cometh harvest ?” with vi. 4: “Now the 
Passover, a feast of the Jews was nigh.” Bishop Westcott, 
however, thinks that St. John meant the Feast of Trumpets, 
which was held on the new moon of September, the beginning 
of the Jewish civil year. It was suggestive of thoughts which 
might seem to be reflected in the subsequent discourses, and we 
know from the incidents at the Feast of Tabernacles — when 
the discourse on the Living Water was suggested by the Feast 
of Drawing Water from Siloam, and that on the Light of the 
World by the illumination of the Temple with great candel- 
abra — that Christ often drew the colouring of His addresses 
from the sourrounding circumstances. 

These details do not, perhaps, admit of a certain interpreta- 
tion ; nevertheless the Gospels do give us a clear picture of the 
main outlines and divisions of Christ’s public ministry. 

We know the events of His infancy. The birth in the man- 
ger was followed by the circumcision on the eighth day after 
the birth; by the purification and presentation in the Temple; 
by the visit of the Magi ; the massacre of the Innocents ; the 
flight into Egypt ; the return ; and the Settlement of the Holy 
Family in Nazareth of Galilee. 

Of His childhood we have no record beyond the statement 
that “ He grew, and was waxing strong, becoming full of wis- 
dom, and the grace of God was upon Him.” Of His boyhood 
nothing is recorded but the visit to the Temple at the first Pass- 
over, and the fact that on His return to Nazareth He lived in 
humble submissiveness to His parents, and advanced in wis- 
dom, and age, and in favour with God and man. 

Of His youth and early manhood, as has been shown, we 
know nothing except that He worked in Nazareth as a village 
carpenter, living in the humble abode with His mother, and 
with those who were always regarded as his brethren and 
sisters. 

Then, when He was about thirty years old, He began his 
public life by going to the Jordan, and accepting the Baptism 


EVENTS IN OUR LORD’S LIFE. 341 

of John, and receiving the Heavenly Sign that his time was 
come. Immediately afterwards He went, under the influence 
of the Spirit, into the wilderness, to be tempted of the Devil for 
forty days. 

From this point begins His active ministry ; and, amid all dif- 
ficulties of detail, we see that it falls into four periods. The 
first was that of initial work ; the second was the period of suc- 
cessful preaching, which has been called “ the happy blossom- 
ing-time in Galilee ” ; the third was the period of struggle and 
opposition, culminating in flight into heathen regions, and in- 
cluding a slow progress to Jerusalem, followed by a time of 
deep retirement; the fourth includes the journey to the last 
Passover, the final discourses in the Temple, the Last Supper, 
betrayal, trial, and Crucifixion. The precise arrangement of 
all details in the varying order adopted by the Evangelist is im- 
possible, but the broad outlines of the ministry as thus ar- 
ranged are now generally accepted. 

FIRST PERIOD. 

On His return from His victorious resistance to temptation, 
Jesus stayed for a short time in the district about the trans- 
Jordanic Bethany, where John was baptising. He there at- 
tracted round Him the first little group of five disciples — An- 
drew, John, Simon, Philip, and Nathanael. With them He 
took his departure to the marriage festival at Cana of Galilee, 
where He wrought His first sign — the turning of the water into 
w i ne — which was not only a work of gracious kindness, but 
also a symbol and a prophecy of the New Dispensation which 
was now dawning on the world. 

From Cana, accompanied by His mother, His brethren, and 
His disciples, Jesus went down to Capernaum, on the shores 
of the Lake of Gennesareth, where He stayed not many days. 
From thence He went to the Passover at Jerusalem. It was 
on this occasion that He cleansed the Temple of the crowd of 
huckstering profaners of its sanctity,* and startled the Jewish 

*On the kennatistai who gave small change, and the kollubistai who gave 
the Temple shekel for heathen money, charging five per cent, (and as much 


342 


THE LIFE OF LIVES. 


authorities by His enigmatic words, “ Destroy this Temple, and 
in three days I will raise it up.” The saying was treasured up 
against Him, but even the disciples did not understand that 
“ He spake of the sanctuary of His body ” until after He had 
risen' from the dead. The only other event recorded of this 
visit is the night interview with the eminent Sanhedrist, Nico- 
demus. 

But though there is no other account of what occurred dur- 
ing this part of His ministry, there are indications that Jesus 
had been met by a stolid and watchful hostility.* He there- 
fore retired into Judsea, and there permitted His disciples to 
baptise, though He Himself never performed the rite. John 
the Baptist was at ^inon.,* on the borders of Galilee and Sam- 
aria. The baptism by the disciples of Jesus was carried on at 
some part of the Jordan valley which belonged to Judaea. 
Some unknown Jew seems to have gone from this scene to 
JEnon, and there to have raised a question with John’s disciples 
“ about purifying ” — perhaps about the relative significance of 
the baptisms of John and of Jesus. The Baptist’s disciples, with 
something of bitterness and jealousy for their Master, came’ 
to John and said, “ Rabbi, He that was with thee beyond Jor- 
dan, to whom thou hast borne witness, behold the same bap- 
tiseth, and all men come to Him:’ They only elicited from the 
Baptist the noble answer that he was not the Bridegroom, but 
only the friend of the Bridegroom ; that “ He must increase, 
but I must decrease.” 

But this successful inauguration of His ministry on the banks 
of the Jordan had other effects. It kindled still more the ani- 
mosity of the Pharisees, to which sect “ the Jew ” who had dis- 
puted with John’s disciples may have belonged. Further than 
this, the news reached Jesus that Herod Antipas had now 

more as they could get) by way of kolbon or agio , see Lightfoot, Hor. Hebr. in 
Matt. xxi. 12. These noisy traders were truly as “ the Canaanite ( Targ-Jon , 
4 trader ’), in the House of the Lord,” who, as Zechariah said (xiv. 2i), should 
be there no more. 

*John iv. i. 

f John iii. 23. Now Aynum , not far from Nablous. 


EVENTS IN OUR LORD’S LIFE. 343 

seized John, and cast him into his dungeon at Machserus.* It 
was, therefore, obviously wise to avoid unnecessary peril, and 
He left Judaea, and departed through Samaria into Galilee. It 
was during this journey that He had the memorable conversa- 
tion with the Samaritan woman by Jacob’s well, in which He 
first clearly announced His own Messiahship. At the earnest 
request of the Samaritans of Shechem He stayed with them 
two days, and won many disciples. He then made His way to 
Galilee, and first visited Cana, where His healing of the cour- 
tier’s son by a word filled the mouths of all men with his fame.f 

The Galileans had seen what He had done at Jerusalem, and 
received Him with enthusiasm as He taught in their syna- 
gogues, journeying towards His native town of Nazareth. But 
“ He Himself testified that a Prophet hath no honor in his own 
country,” and at Nazareth He was not only received with jeal- 
ousy and hatred, but the inhabitants, stung by his reproach, 
tried to hurl Him over the brow of the hill on which their city 
was built. They were, however, overawed by the calm majesty 
of His bearing, and he left them, perhaps never to return. 
Henceforth Capernaum by the silver waves of Galilee became 
His home, so far as we can speak of the home of One who often 
had not where to lay his head.* 

SECOND PERIOD. 

His main work in Galilee now began. It was by far the 
brightest and most triumphant part of His ministry, and in its 
radiant hopefulness and beneficence has been called “ the Gali- 
lean Spring.” He called Peter and Andrew, James and John, 
to a closer relation to Himself, and a more continuous ministry 
of self-sacrifice, astonishing their minds by the miraculous 
draught of fishes, and promising to make them fishers of men. 

* Matt. iv. 12 ; Mark i. 14, vi. 17. 

I John iv. 46. The / 3 aoiXucb<;, or “courtier,” was perhaps Chuzas, the 
steward of Herod Antipas (Luke viii. 3). This is probably not the same 
event as the healing of the centurion's servant (Matt. viii. 5), which seems to 
have taken place later. 

\ “ His own city” (Matt. ix. 1. Comp. iv. 13, 16, xi. 23, xvii. 24). 


344 


THE LIFE OF LIVES. 


His first Sabbath at Capernaum was a memorable day. He 
preached in the synagogue, amazed the listeners by His wis- 
dom and authority, and healed the demoniac. He went thence 
to the house of Peter, and healed his mother, who was lying 
ill of a fever. In the evening the people of the city thronged 
densely round Peter’s house, bringing their demoniacs and their 
diseased. He “ who bore our griefs and carried our sorrows ” 
moved among them, pitied them, and healed them. After this 
He went away to a secluded place to spend the night in quiet 
prayer ; but the multitudes searched for Him, and Simon with 
his friends almost “ hunted ” for him,* and sought with gentle 
force to detain Him in their midst. He may have spent one 
more day with them, preaching perhaps from the little boat 
upon the shore; after which He went around the villages of 
Galilee in circle. It was soon after this that He selected His 
Twelve Apostles for their great work, and promulgated the 
laws of his new kingdom in the Sermon on the Mount. As He 
descended from the Mount of Beatitudes He healed the leper. 
His fame had now grown so great, and He appeared to be im- 
mersed in a life of such incessant work and excitement, that 
even his kinsmen, influenced probably by the instigations of 
Priests and Pharisees, made a too bold and irreverent attempt 
to interfere with and restrain His movements. 

It was this year of His Galilean ministry which was mainly 
marked by a succession of miracles : such were the healing of 
the centurion’s servant ; the opening of the lips of the dumb, 
and the ears of the deaf ; the raising of the widow’s son at 
Nain ; and the miracles performed on those whom He cured in 
order to strengthen the overclouded faith of the imprisoned 
Baptist. One great section of this part of his life circles round 
the feast given to Him by Matthew, one of the hated toll-col- 
lectors whom He summoned to be His apostle.* He healed the 
paralytic let down to Him from the roof, raised the daughter 
of Jairus, and healed the blind men and the woman with the 
issue of blood. Another great phase of work commences with 
the sermon in the boat to the multitude on the shore, when He 
* Luke iv. 42, knetfTovv. Mark i. 36, naredlu^av avrdv. f Matt. ix. 1-34. 


EVENTS IN OUR LORD’S LIFE. 345 

delivered the Parable of the Sower, and began His parabolic 
teaching. After this, in the urgent desire for rest, He set sail 
for the more lonely Eastern shore, and on the way had brief 
interviews with the three imperfect aspirants for discipleship.f 
Then followed the stilling of the storm on the lake, which had 
risen while He lay sleeping the sleep of deep weariness on the 
steersman’s cushion.^: After he had landed He healed the wild 
naked demoniac of Gergesa, and at the request of the Ger- 
gesenes, who were terrified by the loss of their swine, He re- 
turned to Caperaum. 

But the burning enthusiasm of the Galilean multitudes was 
gradually cooled by the open opposition and secret machina- 
tions of the Pharisees, and was beginning to be replaced in the 
hearts of many by suspicion, dislike, and even hostility. It was 
perhaps towards the close of His first year of ministry that 
Jesus heard the terrible news that John had been beheaded in 
prison. A deputation of religious spies from Jerusalem began 
to watch his conduct and dog His footsteps. Nevertheless 
His work had produced deep results, and about this time He 
personally traversed the cities and villages in Galilee, in deep 
pity for the multitude, whom He regarded as sheep harassed 
by wolves, and lying in the fields thirsty and neglected because 
they had no shepherd. At the close of these journeys He des- 
patched the Twelve Apostles, two and two, with a special com- 
mission to heal and teach* During their absence He seems to 
have continued His work nearly alone, perhaps as He slowly 
made His way to the unnamed Feast at Jerusalem which is 
mentioned in John v. I. This, as we have seen, was probably 
the Feast of Purim, and it is quite possible that our Lord’s visit 
to the Holy City was mainly with reference to the Passover 
which occurred a month later. 

But that Passover He never attended. For at the pool of 
Bethesda,* by the sheep gate, He performed the miricle of the 

* See Luke ix. 57-62. \ Mark iv. 38, ent to irpooiceQdhauyv. 

\ Possibly the Fountain of the Virgin in the Wady Kidron Bethesda may 
mean “ House of Mercy" or “ House of the Portico," or, if it be a corruption 
of Bethzatha, “ House of the Olive." See Dalman, Die Worte Jesu,\>. 6. 


THE LIFE OF LIVES. 


346 

healing of the impotent man, which, having been done on the 
Sabbath, roused the still more furious hostility of the Phari- 
sees. Their rage was goaded to fury by the lofty rebukes 
which He addressed to their materialism and ignorance. His 
discourse created such bitter exasperation that they began a 
systematic persecution, and persistently sought an opportunity 
to kill Him,* on the double charge that He was a breaker of the 
Sabbath and a blasphemer against God, whom “ He had called 
His Father, making Himself equal with God.” 

So dangerous a plot compelled Him to return to Galilee with- 
out waiting for the celebration of the Passover. In Galilee He 
seems to have ministered again to eager multitudes, f until He 
retired once more in order to secure rest for Himself and His 
Apostles in “a desert place” near Bethsaida Julias, at the north- 
eastern corner of the lake. But His departure had been ob- 
served, and thousands of Galileans, and others who were on 
their way to the Passover at Jerusalem, went round the end of 
the lake on foot and awaited the arrival of His little vessel. He 
taught them all day long, and, in the evening, compassionating 
their hunger, He fed the five thousand with the five barley 
loaves and two small fishes. Then He dismissed them and His 
disciples, and went up alone to the mountain to pray. A great 
storm followed, and He came to them walking on the sea, and 
arrived with them at Capernaum once more. 

The next day He delivered the great discourse on the Bread 
of Life, in the synagogue at Capernaum.* This led to a decis- 
ive crisis in His career. It caused many who had hitherto been 
His disciples to abandon Him, and it alienated the multitude 
by His refusal to grant them the sign which they had been in- 
stigated to demand. Had they been in the least degree sin- 
cere, it would have been easy for them to understand that the 

* John v. 16, iS. 

t St. John says that “ a great multitude was following Him ” (vi. 2). 

X Perhaps the pot of manna carved on the tympanum of the entrance doorj 
may have suggested to some of those present the remark (John vi. 31), “ Our 
fathers ate the manna in the wilderness , as it is written, He gave them bread 
out of heaven to eat/’ 


EVENTS IN OUR LORD’S LIFE. 347 

words of Christ were merely descriptive of the full spiritual 
appropriation of His life and of His death. The offence they 
chose to take was wilful. The metaphor, “ Except ye eat the 
flesh of the Son of Man, and drink His blood, ye have not life 
in yourselves/’ had been used centuries before in their own sa- 
cred writings to imply the fulness of acceptance, and incorpora- 
tion.* “ Crede et manducasti” said St. Augustine. Truly 
and wisely to believe, is to eat. Christ removed all excuse for 
coarse materialism when He uttered the words, “ The flesh 
profith nothing ; the words which I have spoken unto you are 
spirit and are life.” 

From this time the clouds gathered more and more densely 
around Him. Many of His disciples, St. John tells us, walked 
no more with Him. In spite of His works of miraculous heal- 
ing, He was more and more pressed with criticism and calum- 
nies. He had given deep offence by saying to the paralytic and 
others, “ Thy sins be forgiven thee,” and was charged with 
arrogating to Himself the attributes of God. Because He and 
His disciples fasted not, they called Him “ a gluttonous man 
and a wine-bibber,” as well as “ a friend of publicans and sin- 
ners.” His Sabbath healings, His defence of His hungry 

* John iv. 32, 34. Compare Ps. xix. io, cxix. 3 ; Is. iii. 1 ; Prov. ix. 5 ; 
Ezek. ii. 8, 9, etc. In the AT id rath Koheleth (188, 4) we read, “ Every eating 
and drinking in the Book of Ecclesiastes is to be understood of good works." “ I 
have food to eat that ye know not of.” “ Thy words were found, and I did eat 
them ” (Jer. xv. 16 ; comp. Ezek. ii. 8, iii. 1-3). “ He that eateth me (Wis- 

dom) shall even live by me” (Wisd.). “The just eat of the glory of the 
Shechinah” (a Rabbinic saying.) Moses on Sinai was fed by the music of the 
spheres (Philo, de Somn. 1, 6). “ Prayer shall be my meat and drink ” (Gos- 

pel of St. James). There is not the least excuse for the coarse and fetish-wor- 
shipping materialism which has corrupted the pure spiritual sacrament of the 
Lord’s Supper. “ The Law,” said the Rabbis, “ speaks to us with the tongue 
of the sons of men ” ; and so does the Gospel. This is no more excuse for 
taking literally the words, “ This is my body," than for taking literally, “ I am 
the water of life,” or “ I am the Door.” The notion of drinking the blood of 
Christ (in any material sense whatever) would have been naturally abhorrent to 
them, and the drinking of blood had been imperatively denounced again and 
again in the Old Testament (Gen. ix. 4 ; Lev. iii. 17, vii. 26, 27, xvii. 10-14, 
xix. 26 ; Deut. xii. 16, 23, 24, xv. 23 ; 1 Sam. xiv: 32, 33 ; Ezek. xxxiii. 25. 
Comp. Acts xv. 29). 


348 THE LIFE OF LIVES. 

Apostles for plucking the ears of the corn on the Sabbath and 
rubbing them in their hands, made the Judaean spies denounce 
Him as an open violator of the Law. His neglect of ceremonial 
ablutions led them to brand Him as one who openly ignored 
“ the traditions of the Elders.” His persistent enemies ex- 
plained His casting out of demons by calling Him an ally of 
Beelzebul, prince of the demons. He continued His dis- 
courses and His parables, but the Pharisaic spies were always 
able to interrupt Him with their “ Master, we would see a sign 
from Thee.” At last, on one great day of incessant conflict, 
when the Scribes and Pharisees openly threw off the mask and 
began shamefully “ to press on, and worry him,” * He was 
troubled in spirit, and when the myriads gathered suddenly 
about the door for His protection, He went out to them and 
strongly denounced the hypocrisy of the Pharisees before the 
agitated multitude. f 


THIRD PERIOD. 

Thus did the Galilean ministry, which had begun so brightly, 
end in clouds and darkness, and Jesus went forth with His 
Apostles to wander for months of flight in heathen and semi- 
heathen lands as far as the coasts of Tyre and Sidon. Of His 
works and teaching during this period we are told but little. 
Plis main miracle was performed to reward the heroic faith of 
the poor Syro- Phoenician woman.}: It is probable that He was 
occupied almost wholly in the training of His Apostles for their 
mighty mission in the world. 

On his return to Decapolis He healed the deaf and dumb 
man, and being once more received by multitudes, Jews and 
Greeks, who had flocked and stayed to hear His words, He 

* Luke xi. 53. f Luke xii. 1. 

X We may note that the rebuff, “ It is not meet to take the children’s bread 
and cast it to the dogs,” does not sound harsh (1) if used to call out a victorious 
faith ; or (2) if regarded merely as a current proverb, like “ Charity begins at 
home.” Further (3), nwapia , “little household dogs,” is a much less severe 
term than nvvkq. See Dean Plumtree on Matt. xv. 26 in Ellicott’s New Testa- 
ment Commentary. 


EVENTS IN OUR LORD’S LIFE. 349 

performed His second miracle of feeding a multitude by dis- 
tributing the seven loaves and a few fishes among the four 
thousand. 

He then returned to Galilee, but being once more met by the 
hostile emissaries from Jerusalem, with their demand for “ a 
sign from heaven,” He sailed away. After healing a blind 
man at Bethsaida Julias, He went towards Caesarea Philippi. 
It was during this journey that He put to his Apostles the mo- 
mentous question, “ Who say ye that I am? ” and heard from 
Peter the answer which showed that now His main work was 
accomplished, “ Thou art the Christ, the Holy One of God.” * 
Then first He began plainly to tell them of His coming death, 
and uttered His terrible rebuke to Peter for trying to put a 
stumbling-block on the destined path of His humiliation. This 
was one of the most decisive events in the whole ministry. It 
was the full relisation and acceptance of the fact that the path 
of His glorification and the redemption of men led through the 
awful valley of the shadow, and that by the endurance of shame 
and death He must overcome the powers of death. He had 
prepared His disciples for some great manifestation by telling 
them that “ some of them should not taste of death till they had 
seen the Son of Man coming in His kingdom.” Ascending 
Mount Hermon'with Peter, James, and John, He was trans- 
figured before them. On their descent from the scene of this 
vision of glory, He healed the demoniac boy. Perhaps the 
sense that something great had happened f kindled the selfish 
ambition of the disciples, and caused that unseemly dispute as 
to “ which was the greatest ” * which He reproved by setting 
the little child in the midst of them, and telling them that the 
highest place in the kingdom should be the reward, not of soar- 
ing ambition, but of humility, love, and unselfish service. It 

* This is the reading of tf, B, C, D, L, in John vi. 69. 

fHis appearance — perhaps some lingering traces (as Theophylact thought) 
of the Transfiguration glory — amazed the multitudes. 

X Mark ix. 3 ; Luke ix. 46, xxii. 24 The dispute was not “ which of them 
should be,” but “ which of them is accounted to be greater,” or, ‘ f who was the 
greater.” 


350 


THE LIFE OF LIVES. 


may have been during a brief rest at Capernaum that the inci- 
dent occurred of His payment of the Temple tribute. 

After this — setting aside the intrusive advice of His too 
presumptuous brethren — He went privately to Jerusalem to the 
Feast of Tabernacles. Here again He encountered a most 
deadly opposition. The Pharisees scornfully represented Him 
as an ignoramus — not a Chaber , who had attended the schools 
of the Rabbis, but an Am ha-arets , who had never learnt “ let- 
ters ” in their sense a “ niesith ” who was leading the multi- 
tude astray-t To his mention of the fact that some of them 
were going about to kill Him, they answered that “ He had a 
demon.” They again engaged Him in acrimonious Sabbath 
disputes, and it was constantly on their lips that He was “ a 
Samaritan ” and a demoniac. Yet He went on teaching as He 
sat in the Treasury, the most frequented part of the Temple. 
With reference to two great events in the Feast, the joy of the 
Festival of Drawing Water, and the illumination of the Temple 
with great golden candelabra — which originally commemorated 
the smitten rock and the pillar of fire — He uttered His memor- 
able discourses on the Living Water and the Light of the 
World.* It was at this feast that the incident occurred of the 
dragging into his presence of the woman taken in adultery,* 
after which His enemies were so roused to fury by His re- 
proaches, and revelations of His Eternal Being, that they took 
up stones to stone Him. Shortly after this He opened the eyes 
of the man born blind, who, as a result of his faith in, and grati- 
tude to, One whom they denounced as a sinner, incurred the 
ban of their excommunication. 

From Jerusalem He returned to Galilee. Before He bade 
His last sad farewell to the cities and country which had heard 
His sermons and parables and witnessed most of His wonder- 

* John vii. 12, -rrTiava, 49. 

f See Ex xvii. 6; Num. xx. 11 ; Is. Iviii. 11 ; Zech. xiv. 8 ; and, for the 
metaphor of Light, Is. xlii. 6, xlix. 6 ; Mai. iv. 2 ; Luke ii. 32. 

X An undoubtedly authentic incident, though, perhaps, taken from Papias, 
and not a part of the original Gospel. It was in the Gospel acc. to the 
Hebrews (Euseb. //. E. iii. 40). It differs in many particulars from the style 
of St. John, and is absent from .the oldest MSS., and obelised in others. 


EVENTS IN OUR LORD’S LIFE. 35 i 

ful works, He uttered the “ woe ” on Chorazin, Bethsaida, and 
Capernaum, which was afterwards so terribly fulfilled.^ It 
seems to have been at this time that He sent the Seventy on 
their mission. 

The Pharisees warned Him of a pretended design of Herod 
Antipas to seize Him, but He saw through their machinations. 
He then set out on His journey to Jerusalem, and the greater 
part of the two months between the Feast of Tabernacles and 
that of Dedication seems to have been occupied with that slow 
journey of which the details are furnished to us only by St. 
Luke. He had meant to go through Samaria, but was 
churlishly refused hospitality by the Samaritans of En Gan- 
nim, where He rebuked the vengeful wrath of the Sons of 
Thunder. Turning to the road which led by the other route to 
Jerusalem, through Peraea, He cleansed the ten lepers, of 
whom one only — and he a Samaritan — returned to express his 
gratitude. During this journey He preached in various syna- 
gogues, healed the bowed woman, and the man with the dropsy, 
and once again refuted the ignorant and self-satisfied Sabba- 
tarianism of small-minded local officials. It was perhaps dur- 
ing this journey that He “ exulted in spirit,” cheered by the re- 
turn of the Seventy from their mission ; and amid deep dis- 
courses and solemn warnings He enshrined some of His most 
solemn parables — such as the Parables of the Good Samaritan, 
Dives and Lazarus, and the Prodigal Son. 

At the close of His progress through Persea, we find Jesus 
domiciled at Bethany, in the quiet home which was very dear 
to Him, the house of Martha and Mary, and Lazarus whom he 
loved. It was here that He taught to the eager, busy Martha 
that “ one thing is needful ” ; and it was from this house that 
He walked over the Mount of Olives to the Temple, to be 
present at the Feast of the Dedication, which was kept about 
December 20. It was during this visit that He spoke the alle- 

* See the terrible description of the state of stench, pestilence, shipwreck, and 
desolation to which Galilee was reduced — a state so awful as even to stir the 
commiseration of those who had caused it. In Jos., B. J., iii. io, 8. See, 
too, Renan. L' Antichrist, p. 277. 


THE LIFE OF LIVES. 


35 2 

gory of the Fair Shepherd, who would protect not only His 
own sheep, but also those other sheep which were not “ of His 
fold,” (av A?/), but which should nevertheless be united here- 
after into “ one flock ” {noi^xvrj). Here, as He paced up and 
down the splendid eastern porch of the Temple, the Pharisaic 
party and their leaders suddenly surrounded Him, and imperi- 
ously demanded of Him whether He was the Messiah or not. 
In reply He referred them to His teaching and His works ; and 
in the course of his address used the words, “ I and My Father 
are one.” * The result was a burst of fury, and they took up 
some of the heavy stones which were scattered about for the 
yet unfinished restoration of the Temple, that they might stone 
Him to death. But they were overawed by the calm majesty 
with which He continued His appeals and arguments ; and, 
alone and defenceless though He was, they did not even dare 
to seize Him. He now felt that it was useless to continue His 
words to men who only glared upon him with fierce hatred on 
their scowling faces. He retired therefore into comparative 
seclusion, to the Bethany beyond Jordan, where John once bap- 
tised, and where many accepted His teaching.*)* 

It was perhaps during, or just before, this last stay in Perasa 
that the touching incident took place of “ the great refusal ” 
made by the eager young ruler who had sought for something 
higher and more heroical in religion than the current religion- 
ism offered, but who failed to meet the test which he had sought. 
In the deep discourses which followed this scene, and in an- 
swer to the question of Peter, “ Lo, we have forsaken all and 
followed Thee ; what shall we have, therefore ? ” He told the 
Parable of the Labourers in the Vineyard. 

While he was still living in semi-retirement at the Persean 
Bethany, He received from the sisters at the other Bethany the 
urgent message, “ Lord, he whom Thou lovest is sick.” Then 
followed the memorable scenes and revelations in connection 
with the raising of Lazarus from the dead, described by St. John 

* Lit. “ one thing ” (h), i. e., of one substance. 

f john x. 41, 42. “So the narrative of the Lord’s ministry closes on the 
spot where it began.” — Westcott. 


EVENTS IN OUR LORD’S LIFE. 353 

with such characteristic vividness. The rumours of so stupen- 
dous a miracle fanned into white heat the jealous rage of the 
Sadducees, and at a private meeting of Sanhedrists, the High 
Priest, Joseph Caiaphas, son-in-law of Annas — a thorough 
Sadducee, who had gained his High-Priesthood by bribery — 
propounded the hideous suggestion of political expediency that 
Jesus must at all hazards be seized and slain. This secret fiat 
became known, and thenceforth He was living with, a price 
upon His head. He again retired into the still deeper se- 
crecy of a little obscure town called Ephraim, on the edge of 
the wilderness, and there He stayed till His last Passover.* 

FOURTH PERIOD. 

Jesus knew that His only chance of even temporary protection 
from the hierarchs at Jerusalem lay in the presence of the num- 
erous Galilean pilgrims, of whom so many loved and believed 
on Him. When, therefore, from the hill of Ephraim He saw 
them streaming down the Jordan valley on their way to the 
Holy City, He set forth to join them, walking before His dis- 
ciples in such a Transfiguration of self-sacrifice as to fill them 
with terror and amazement, especially when, for the first time, 
He revealed to them the crowning horror that He was not only 
to be rejected and put to death, but that He was to be crucified. 
This they could not or would not understand ; but — perhaps 
led into earthly hopes of a speedily coming Messianic splendour 
— James and John, with their mother Salome, chose this most 
inopportune moment to ask for thrones on His right hand and 
His left hand in His kingdom. This gave Him the opportunity 
to impress yet more deeply on the minds of the throne-seekers, 
and of the Apostles who were indignant with them for their for- 
wardness, the eternal rewards of humility and love. 

So they advanced to the environs of Jericho, the city of roses 
and palms, and balsam gardens. Here Jesus healed blind Bar- 

* Ephriam is, perhaps , El Taiyibeh, twenty miles from Jerusalem, not far 
from Bethel, called Ophrah in Josh, xviii. 23 ; 2 Chron. xiii. 19 ; 1 Sam. xiii. 
17, iv. 9 (Robinson, Bill. Researches , i. 444)- 


354 


THE LIFE OF LIVES. 


timaeus, and with a few words of mercy transformed Zacchaeus 
from a greedy publican into a true and generous son of Abra- 
ham. During the progress towards Bethany the sight of the 
splendid Herodian palace built by Archelaus led Him, as we 
have seen, to weave some incidents in the history of that worth- 
less tyrant into the Parable of the Pounds. 


CHAPTER XXXIII. 


THE CLOSING DAYS. 

“ Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for 
his friends.” — John xv. 13. 

The records which follow the arrival of Christ at Bethany 
are devoted to the history of the closing scenes in the life of 
Christ, which occupy so large a space in the collective records of 
the Gospels. 

Jesus and His Apostles, escorted by large numbers of Gali- 
lean pilgrims, reached Bethany probably on the evening of 
Thursday, Nisan 7, or Friday, Nisan 8 (March 31, a. d. 30), 
six days before the beginning of the Passover.* He spent the 
Sabbath in quiet, and in the evening they made Him a supper, 
at which Mary anointed His head and feet with the precious 
spikenard, which she had perhaps reserved from her brother’s 
funeral. Jesus protected her from the murmurs of the disciples 
who, instigated by Judas, denounced this act of loving gener- 
osity as a meaningless waste. 

How marvellously has His promise been fulfilled, that the 
act of love performed at a humble feast in an obscure Judaean 
village should be commemorated ever afterwards through all 
the world ! We may say of Mary of Bethany, “ Because of the 
perfume of thy sweet ointments thy name is as ointment poured 
forth.” 

This, as I have said, was the turning-point in the career of 
Judas, because it goaded into terrible force his besetting sin. 
Obviously his chances of gain were over, for Jesus spoke of 

* Nothing certain can be affirmed as to the exact date. It has already been 
shown that those who have examined the chronology with the minutest care 
have arrived at widely different conclusions. It forms no part of my object in 
this book to enter into minute discussions of uncertainties. 


355 


356 


THE LIFE OF LIVES. 


His approaching burial, and this was the death-blow to all pos- 
sibility of earthly Messianic hopes. Thus did “ the tempting 
opportunity ” meet “ the susceptible disposition.” 

It was on the next day — Palm Sunday — that Jesus, mounted 
on the ass’s colt, rode in the humble procession of which the 
exultant joy was over-shadowed when He paused at the turn- 
ing of the road to wail aloud over Jerusalem and its coming 
doom. Once more He cleansed the Temple courts of the noisy 
traffickers ; * defended the Levitic choir boys, with whose Ho- 
sannas the Pharisees were displeased ; and probably admitted 
to an interview the Greeks who had gone to Philip desiring to 
see Him. Then He heard, for the third time, the Voice from 
Heaven, which uplifted and cheered His soul.f He explained 
its significance to the people who did not dare to confess Him, 
because to do so was to face the ban of the Sanhedrin. In the 
evening He left the Holy City, and went to bivouac with His 
disciples somewhere under the shadows of the Mount of Olives. 

The Monday of Passion week was a day of parables. In the 
morning took place the acted parable of the barren fig-tree. He 
met the challenge of the Priests as to His authority by His 
counter-question as to the mission of John, and during the 
course of the day addressed to the listening multitudes the Par- 
ables of the Two Sons; of the Rebellious Husbandmen; of the 
Rejected Corner-stone; and of the Marriage of the King’s Son. 
The obvious import of these parables filled His enemies with 
madness, and they would gladly have seized Him then and there; 
but they were still afraid of the multitude, and Jesus once more 
retired unmolested to the Mount of Olives. 

The next day (Tuesday in Passion week) was the day of 
temptations — the last, and in some respects the most memora- 
ble, day in the earthly ministry of Christ. On the previous 
evening various machinations, in the form of dangerous and 
entangling questions, had been secretly contrived against Him 

* See Zech. xiv. 21, where the Targum of Jonathan reads, “There shall be 
no more the trader in the House of the Lord.” 

f At His Baptism, Matt. iii. 17 ; at the Transfiguration, Matt. xvii. 5 ; and 
now, John xii. 28. 


THE CLOSING DAYS. 


357 


by each main class of His enemies. First came the plot of the 
Herodians to entrap Him by the question about the lawfulness 
of paying- tribute money to Caesar.* Then followed the poor, 
casuistical question of the Sadducees about the seven-fold 
widow. The sovereign wisdom with which He defeated these 
subtle conspiracies, and the divine lessons which He appended 
to His demonstration of the errors of His enemies, won the 
admiration even of some of the Scribes. One of them, how- 
ever, wishing to test Him further, asked Him the common 
Rabbinic question : “ Master, which is the great command- 

ment of the Law ? ” Our Lord needed only to remind the 
questioner of the passages transcribed in his own phylacteries, 
which summed up the whole essence, of the Law in love to 
God and love to our neighbour. The Scribe so fully acknowl- 
edged the justice and wisdom of the answer that Jesus said 
to him : “ Thou are not far from the Kingdom of Heaven.” 

But now, to show the Pharisees how little they were en- 
dowed with wisdom, He convicted them of being “ blind leaders 
of the blind,” by exposing their inability to answer the ques- 
tion, “ How He whom David called his Lord could be his 
Son?” And then, “since Love had played her part in vain, 
Vengeance leaped upon the stage,” and He uttered against the 
Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, His eight-fold “ woe.” His 
spirit must have been terribly agitated by hours of such man- 
ifold excitement, but the last incident and the last words in the 
Temple were peaceful. He saw the rich ostentatiously casting 
their offerings into the Shopharoth, or trumpet-shaped alms- 
boxes,* and among them came one poor widow who had noth- 
ing to give but two mites, which make one farthing. This, He 
said, was the true charity, for out of her penury she “ had cast 
in all that she had.” 

After this He left the Temple ; and when the disciples called 
His attention to its stateliness and splendour, He prophesied 

* It is probable that the Roman poll-tax could only be paid in denarii, which 
were current in Palestine (Matt. xx. 2), and this was a decisive proof that the 
land acknowledged Caesar as its ruler. 

f Yoma, f. 55, 2. 


35 » 


THE LIFE OF LIVES. 


that not one stone of it should be left upon another. As they 
sat on the Mount of Olives they asked Him, “ When shall these 
things be, and what shall be the sign of Thy coming, and of 
the end of the world ? ” In answer to this question He delivered 
His great eschatological discourse, dealing first with the de- 
struction of Jerusalem, and the awful catastrophes with which 
the Old Dispensation should come to an end, and glancing be- 
yond it to the close of “ the coming age,” and the final end of 
the world. To deepen their sense of the need of watchfulness, 
He told them the exquisite Parables of the Ten Virgins and of 
the Talents, and ended by warning them that “ after two days 
was the Passover, and the Son of Man is betrayed to be cruci- 
fied.” Such were the thoughts which occupied our Lord and 
His disciples on that last sad walk towards Bethany. 

The Wednesday in Passion week was evidently spent by our 
Lord in seclusion from the world, in company with His chosen 
Apostles. Alike His friends and His enemies may have ex- 
pected to see Him as usual teaching in the Temple courts, and 
doubtless the Priests and Sadducees had hatched fresh plots 
of their own, in conjunction with Judas. But Jesus came not. 
It was necessary for Him to prepare His soul for the awful 
baptism of blood ; and doubtless He rejoiced to be for one day 
at peace, unassailed by the tempting questions and subtly dan- 
gerous malignities of priestly hypocrites. Who can say what 
infinite peace and refreshment He gained from that day of holy 
intercourse with His Father in Heaven, and in the society of 
those whom He could trust and love? 

On the morning of Thursday — “ Green Thursday,” as it 
used to be called — His disciples asked Him where they should 
prepare for Him the Paschal Feast, and He gave them a secret 
and mysterious sign which would lead them to the house (as 
has been conjectured) of the father of St. Mark, who was 
probably a secret disciple. Thither they would go after sunset, 
when the shadows of the evening began to fall; and there (so 
far as they knew and expected) after the evening meal of that 
day — known as the Chagigah , or “ Thanksgiving,” to which 
a quasi-Paschal character was given — they could the next day 


THE CLOSING DAYS. 


359 


eat of the real Passover, and sacrifice the Paschal Lamb.* But 
it was not so to be. It was written in the decrees of Eternal 
Providence that our Lord was not to eat the Paschal Lamb, 
but Llimself to be sacrificed, /' that the reality might correspond 
to the figure, and the true Lamb might be slain on the same 
day as the lamb which was His antitype.” f 

* “ May we not then suppose that the preparation, which the disciples may 
have destined for the next day, was made the preparation for an immediate 
meal, which became the Paschal meal of that year when the events of the 
following morning rendered the regular Passover ^impossible .’*■ — Westcott, 
Introd., p. 344. 

f Maldonatus. Comp, 1 Cor. v. 7, xi. 23. I have entered fully elsewhere 
(see Exc. X. in my Life of Christ ) into the question whether the Last Supper 
was the real Paschal meal or only an anticipated Passover to which our Lord 
knowing the doom which immediately hung over Him, gave a quasi-Paschal 
character. The Chronicon Paschale says distinctly, “ He did not eat the 
Paschal Lamb, but was Himself the Genuine Lamb.” Additional and 
repeated study convinces me that — as seems to be so indubitably indicated by 
St. John (xviii. 28, xix. 14, 31, 42) — it was not the Passover that was eaten on 
the night previous to that feast ; and that the allusions of the Synoptists, which 
seem to indicate that it was the Passover, are partly due to certain Jewish cus- 
toms and expressions and partly counterbalanced by other indications (Mark 
xv., 21, 46 ; Lukexxii. 52, 55, xxiii. 26, 56). Each of the Evangelists says that 
our Lord suffered on the day which they call “a” or “ the Preparation ’’ 
{TrapaoKEvr/, Matt, xxvii. 62 ; Mark xv. 42 ; Luke xxiii. 54 ; John xix. 31), and 
the word Paras keue undoubtedly means “ Friday,” which in that year was the 
day on the evening of which the actual Passover was observed, as St. John 
expressly says (xix. 14 : comp. xix. 38, 42) ; and with this, Jewish tradition 
agrees. Moreover, “ early Christian tradition is almost unanimous in fixing 
the Crucifixion on Nisan 14, and in distinguishing the Last Supper from the 
Legal Passover” (Routh, Rell. Sacr. i. 168 ; Westcott, Introd. to the Gospels , 
p, 343)- For many more proofs of the position I have taken I may refer to 
my Life of Christ. 


CHAPTER XXXIV. 


THE LAST SUPPER. 

“ No longer do I call you servants . . . but I have called you 

friends.” — John xv. 15. 

On that Thursday evening they met in the upper room — 
probably the same which was afterwards the scene of Pente- 
cost. To us it might seem almost incredible that, when they 
began to recline for the feast, a dispute should arise among the 
Apostles about precedence. We can only account for it by the 
fact that, though a deep gloom seemed to overshadow them, 
because they were all conscious that some awful crisis was at 
hand, they yet cherished the conviction that, however that crisis 
might end for the moment, it could not but finally issue in that 
promised glory when, in figurative language, they should sit 
on twelve thrones judging the Twelve Tribes of Israel. Per- 
haps with the more reprehensible self-seeking was mingled a 
longing, in the heart of each of them, to be as near as possible 
to his Lord. But Jesus rebuked their murmured jealousies by 
the loveliest of acted parables. “ Though He knew that the 
Father had given all things into His hands, and that He came 
from God, and was going to God,” He arose from supper., and, 
taking upon Him the form of a slave,” laid aside. His upper 
garments, the simchah and cetoneth, girt Himself round the 
waist with a slave’s apron, and kneeling down began without 
a word to wash His disciples’ feet, and wipe them with the 
towel wherewith He was girded. He washed — oh, unfathomable 
love and compassion! — even the traitor’s feet; and explained 
to the impetuous Peter that if He washed not his feet, he had 

360 


THE LAST SUPPER. 361 

no share in Him,* * * § but that “ he that hath been bathed needeth 
not save to wash his feet .” f 

The story of that Last Supper is one of the divinest and most 
tender of all human records. Pages of more moving and ex- 
quisite instructiveness were never written than St. John’s nar- 
rative of its incidents, and of those discourses “ so rarely mixed 
of sorrows and joys, and studded with mysteries as with 
emeralds.” The declaration that one of them should betray 
Him ; the eager, passionate questions, “ Lord, is it I ? ” fol- 
lowed by the cold, formal “ Is it I, Rabbi?” of the betrayer; 
the whispered questions of Peter to John; the quick change 
of attitude of the young disciple whom Jesus loved, and who 
was at the right of Jesus, reclining with his head upon His 
breast; ± the giving of the sop to Judas, and his stepping forth 
into the night — were incidents which occurred in quick suc- 
cession. No sooner was Judas gone than the spirits of all the 
little band seemed to be freed from a terrible incubus. Calling 
them His “ little children,” * Jesus founded the Lord’s Supper 
as a continual memorial of His death and passion by a par- 
ticipation in what St. Paul calls “ spiritual food ” and “ spiritual 
drink.” Then He began to give them His last revelations. He 
bade them love on another; and trust in His and His Father’s 
ever-present love.f He assured them that by His Holy Spirit 
He would be with them always, “ even to the end of the world.” 
The goiden stream of His utterance was broken by an occa- 
sional question from one or other of the disciples. “ Lord, 

* How powerfully this act of lowliness affected the mind of St. Peter we see 
from his indirect reference to it many years later, in the words, eyKOfi^uoaoSe 
Trjv Tinreivotypoovvrjv , Tie humility of mind round you like a slave s apron fastened 
with knots (. Komboma ), i Pet. v. 5. K 6 p[ 3 og means “ a band,” or “ girth.” 

f John xiii. 10. 

;{: John xiii. 22, 25. As the guests rested at table on the left arm, Johns 
head would rest on Christ’s robe ; and when he suddenly moved to speak to 
Jesus, his head was touching Christ’s breast. 

§ Tf avia. Only in John xiii. 33. In xxi. 5 it is tt aidia. 

|| John xiii. 34, xiv. 21. Judas seems to have been present at the the distri- 
bution of the bread (Luke xxii. 19), but not (perhaps) at the blessing of the 
sacramental cup. 


THE LIFE OF LIVES. 


362 

whither goest thou ? ” asked St. Peter, and “ Why cannot I 
follow Thee now ? ” $ and in answer he received a warning 
of the deepest solemnity, yet also of the most loving tender- 
ness. To the last the Apostles often mistook the real force of 
His words, as they showed by the ignorant literalism of their 
remark, “ Lord, here are two swords.” “Lord, we know not 
whither Thou goest, and how can we know the way? ” asked the 
perplexed and despondent Thomas. § “ Lord, show us the 

Father, and it sufficeth us,” said Philip. || Judas Lebbseus 
evinced his perplexity by the question, “ Lord, how it is that 
Thou wilt manifest Thyself unto us, and not unto the world? ” * 
When the Lord had answered these questions, and dwelt on 
the further thoughts which they suggested, He said, “ Arise, 
let us go hence.” Before starting they joined in singing a 
hymn, probably a part of the Great Hallel (Ps. 136). Per- 
haps the allegory of the True Vine was spoken on the way to 
the Kidron, and suggested by the vineyards through which they 
were passing; or, as some conjecture, the little band went to 
the Temple, which at the Passover was opened at midnight, and 
the allegory may have been pointed by the sight of the Golden 
Vine over the Temple door. After speaking to them of union 
with Him, and of the Promised Comforter, and of the issue of 
sorrow in joy and of defeat in victory, He received the expres- 
sion of their earnest thankfulness. At first they could not un- 
uerstand all He said, and were afraid to ask Him; but as He 
clothed His revelations in clearer and clearer form, He called 
forth their gratitude in the words, “ Lord, now speakest Thou 
plainly, and speakest no proverb. Now know we that Thou 
knowest all things, and needest not that any man should ask 
Thee ; by this we believe that Thou earnest forth from God.” 
Alas! did they indeed now believe? He asked. The hour was 
close at hand when they should all abandon Him. Yet He had 
spoken to them that in Him they might have peace, and though 
in the world they should have tribulations, let them be of good 
cheer, for He had overcome the world. 


* John xiii. 36-38. 
J John xiv. 8-14. 


f John xiv. 5-7. 

§ John xiv. 22-24. 


THE LAST SUPPER. 


363 


Then Jesus lifted up His eyes to heaven, and uttered the 
great High-Priestly prayer for Himself, and His loved ones, 
and for all who should believe through their word. After that 
they walked on under the moonlight, and followed Him under 
the moonlit-silvered leaves of the olives with an awful dread 
brooding over their spirits, as He walked before them with 
bowed head on the way to the Garden of Gethsemane.* 

* Luke xxii. 39, 40, t6tt og ; John xviii. 1, Kfjnoc\ Matt. xxvi. 36, x <t) P l0V • 
Gethsemane means ‘ ‘ oil-press. ” 


I 


CHAPTER XXXV. 

GETHSEMANE. 

“ Is it nothing to you, all ye that pass by ? Behold and see if there 
be any sorrow like unto my sorrow." — Lam. i. 12. 

And now the night deepened, and Jesus knew that the awful 
hour was close at hand. He told the majority of the Apostles 
to sit down in the garden while He Himself withdrew for 
prayer. They sank into sleep, weary with the burdens and trials 
of the day ; but He had slept His last sleep on earth. He took 
with Him the three nearest and dearest of His chosen followers 
— Peter and James and John — because His awfully agitated hu- 
man spirit felt in that supreme hour the need for human sym- 
pathy. Pie bade them to watch and pray for Him. But now 
the flood-tide of unspeakable anguish began to roll its waves 
over His soul. Even the presence of the three was more than 
He could bear, and, telling them that His soul was very heavy, 
even unto death, He tore Himself away from them, and again 
urging them to watch and pray, went about a stone’s throw 
from them, and falling upon His knees, and then upon His 
face, prayed in an awful intensity of suffering that, if it were 
His Father’s will, the cup might pass from Him. And in the 
passion of His emotion the sweat poured down from His up- 
lifted countenance as in great gouts of blood.* Thrice He 
prayed thus, and thrice going back to the most chosen of His 
chosen,. He found them sleeping from grief and utter weari- 
ness. He might have cried in the words of the Psalmist : “ Thy 
rebuke hath broken My heart, I am full of heaviness ; I looked 

* It should, however, be noticed that the verse about the “bloodlike sweat ” 
and the angel (Luke xxii. 43, 44) are not certainly genuine, since they are not 
found in MSS. K A, B, etc. They are doubly bracketed in Westcott and 
Hort’s New Testament. 


364 


GETHSEMANE. 


365 

for some to have pity upon Me, but there was no man ; neither 
found I any to comfort Me.” An angel from heaven strength- 
ened Him. Ere long the power of His willing self-sacrifice, of 
His absolute acquiescence in His Heavenly Father’s will, won 
the complete and final victory over the tornadoes of His agony, 
and when He returned to His disciples it was to tell them, with 
a perfect and untroubled calm, which remained undisturbed 
until the end, that now His hour had come, and the betrayer 
was at hand. 

The light of many torches and lanterns began to twinkle 
through the olive grove ; the tramp of soldiers echoed along the 
rocky paths ; there was a clank of swords and of armour, and 
the hoarse murmur of an advancing crowd. Judas had dis- 
covered where He was ; the High Priest had ordered the at- 
tendance of the Captain of the Temple f and his myrmidons ; 
Pilate — warned that there might be a tumult — had lent some of 
his soldiers from Fort Antonia, under their Chiliarch or Trib- 
une.* They were now near at hand — both Jews and Gentiles. 
Judas hurried forward with the words, “Rabbi, Rabbi! ”f 
and saluted Jesus with fervent and- over-acted kisses. “ Com- 
rade!” said Jesus sternly; “that for which thou art 
come . . .” t Then followed the rash blow of Peter ; the 

supernatural terror of the crowd ; the seizing, the binding, and 
leading away of Jesus ; § the flight of all His disciples, and of 
the young man — probably St. Mark — who fled away naked 
when the captors took hold of the sind on which he had thrown 
loosely over his shoulders. 

But Jesus had won His final triumph over the hour and 
power of darkness. He had only a few more hours to live, but 

* Known as the Ish har ha-Beit, “ the man of the mount of the house,” or 
Sar ha-birah (2 Macc. iii. 4). 

J If airelpa means “ a maniple,” that was 200 men, the third part of a cohort. 
But probably the word is used quite generally. 

\ Mark xiv. 45. 

§ Matt. xxvi. 50, eraipe, “companion”; not “friend.” The sentence, 
k<f>' 0 irapet . . . seems to be left unfinished. It does not seem to be a 
question. 

| John alone mentions the binding (John xviii. 12). 


366 THE LIFE OF LIVES. 

from this moment no brutalism of insult, no refinement of 
mockery, no outburst of rage and scorn, no complication of tor- 
ture and agony, ruffled for one instant the divine serenity of 
that majesty which, in spite of themselves, sensibly overawed 
and impressed even the most recklessly unscrupulous of His 
enemies. The complicated intensities of His sufferings only 
served to bring into more supernatural lustre the unapproach- 
able brightness of His glory. 


CHAPTER XXXVI. 


THE TRIALS BEFORE THE JEWS. 

41 I gave My back to the smiters, and My cheeks to them that plucked 
off the hair; I hid not My face from shame and spitting.” — Is. 1 . 16. 

“It cannot be that a Prophet perish out of Jerusalem.” — Luke 
xiii. 33. 

I have, elsewhere, minutely followed and endeavored to il- 
lustrate, from history and from other sources, the full and four- 
fold narratives of the Gospels respecting the various phases of 
the trials of Christ before the High Priests and Sanhedrin, and 
before the Roman Procurator. I shall here only endeavour to 
summarise and to point the significance of the events recorded. 

We are struck first with the monstrous illegality of the mock 
trials as they were carried out by Annas and Caiaphas and the 
chief Priests, by the Sudducean priestly party in general, and 
by the Pharisees, who, though they no longer took a prominent 
part in the proceedings, yet must have consented to them, since 
they, at this time, constituted the majority of the Sanhedrin.* 
We know of two only — Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathsea 
— “ who had not consented to the will and deed of them.” Even 
Rabban Gamaliel, the famous grandson of the great Hillel, must 
have been among those who allowed complicated irregularities 
to proceed without any public protest against them. 

One of the awful warnings to be derived from this most ter- 
rible event in the history of mankind is the blindness, the van- 
ity, the capability of unutterable wickedness which may co-exist 
with the pretentious scrupulosities of an external religionism. 
The Priests and Pharisees had sunk into hypocrisy so deep and 
habitual that it had become half-unconscious, because it had 

* Hence we read in John xi. 47 that “ the chief Priests and the Pharisees ” 
gathered the Council at which it was decided to put Him to death. 

367 , 


3 68 


THE LIFE OF LIVES. 


narcotised and all but paralysed the moral sense. They were 
infinitely particular about peddling littlenesses, but, with a hid- 
eous cruelty and a hateful indifference to all their highest duties 
to God and man, they murdered on false charges the Lord of 
Glory. A vile self-interest — the determination at all costs to 
maintain their own prerogatives, and to prevent all questioning 
of their own traditional system — had swallowed up every other 
consideration in the minds of men whose very religion had be- 
come a thing of rites and ceremonies, and had lost all power to 
touch the heart, or to inspire the moral sense. “ The religion of 
Israel,” it has been said, “ falsified by priests, perverted from 
the service of the Living God into a sensuous worship — where 
the symbol superseded the reality, the Temple over-shadowed 
the God, and the hierarchy supplanted His law — could find no 
love in its heart, no reverence in its will, for the holiest Person 
of its race ; met Him not as the fruition of its hopes, and the 
end of its being, but as the last calamity of its life, a Being 
who must perish that it might live.” * 

How many of the nominal Pontiffs who, at the will of the 
Romans and the Herods, had “ passed the chair ” of the High 
Priesthood, and may have taken part in the trial of Jesus, 
we do not kriow.f Besides Annas and Caiaphas, there may 
have been present Ishmael ben Phabi; Eleazar (a son of An- 
nas) ; Simon ben Kamhith ; and of those' who subsequently be- 
came High Priests, Jonathan, Theophilus, and Matthias (sons 
of Annas), Simon Kantheras, Joseph ben Kamhith,. and others. 
Even among the Jews, as we have already seen from the Tal- 
mud, the names of these worldly and avaricious Pontiffs were 
held in detestation. 

Annas and his son-in-law, Caiaphas, were the leading spirits 
in this evil conclave. Josephus, in one passage, calls Annas 
the most fortunate of men because “ he had five sons who had 

* Fairbairn, Studies, p. 307. 

f Josephus tells us ( Antt . xx. 10, 1) that there had been twenty-eight of these 
avaricious, simoniacal, and unworthy desecrators of the priesthood in 100 
years. 


THE TRIALS BEFORE THE JEWS. 369 

all held the office of High Priest, :j: as well as Caiaphas, his son- 
in-law.” § 

He had been appointed High Priest a. d. 6 by Quirinius, 
and deposed in a. d. 15 by Valerius Gratus. His youngest son, 
Annas the second, was the murderer of James, the Lord’s 
brother. For this crime — impudently committed during the 
interregnum between two procuratorships — Albinius deposed 
him. Later on, the long-delayed vengeance fell on him. Dur- 
ing the Jewish war the house of Annas was destroyed by a fu- 
rious mob, this last son of the house was scourged and beaten 
to his place of murder, and his dead body flung out naked to 
the food of dogs' and wild beasts* * * § 

The name of Planan (Annas) means “ merciful ” — the exact 
opposite of the man’s real nature. The High Priest who bore it 
has left a disastrous record of himself and his family. The 
Sadducees as a body were notorious for their cruel severity, and 
this family was among the worst. f Though now an old man, 
Annas was an astute, avaricious worldling.:!: Josephus tells us 
that there was, in this age, a sedition between the High Priests 
and the chief leaders of the people. Each party had violent ad- 
herents who often interchangd not only reproachful words, but 
showers of stones, and produced an epoch of misrule in Jerusa- 
lem. “ And such,” he says, “ was the impudence and boldness 
that had seized on the High Priests, that they had the hardness 
to send their servants to the threshing floors to seize tithes due 
to priests, so that the poorer sort of priests died for want.” If 
the priests resisted, they beat them.* Besides these acts of au- 

* On Annas see Jos., Anti. xx. 9, 1. His sons were; Eleazar A. D. 16 ; 
Jonathan A. D. 36 ; Theophilus a. d. 37 ; Matthias a. d. 42-43 ; Annas the 
younger A. D. 62. 

f Joseph Caiaphas (another form of Cephas) A. D. 18-36. He was deposed 
by Vitellius A. D. 37. He continued to persecute Christians (Acts iv. 6). 

X Jos. B. J. iv. 5, 2. 

§ Jos. Antt. xx. 9, 1. 7T epl rag npioeig upol napa navrag rot»f ’I ovdaiovQ (speak- 
ing of the trial of James). Josephus also calls them airqvelg nal ova avearol 
ttM/Qeoiv {Antt. xviii. 1, 4). He speaks of the son of Annas, who executed 
James, as unnsually audacious and turbulent {Antt. xx. 9, 1). 

J| Antt. xx. viii. 8. Josephus calls him Ananus. 'IF Antt. xx. 9, 2. 


370 


THE LIFE OF LIVES. 


dacious tyranny, the members of the house of Annas were uni- 
versally condemned for greed. J Wealthy as they were, they 
had set up four booths ( Chanuyo th ) on the Mount of Olives 
for the sale of materials for sacrifice, and especially for the sale 
of doves — the offerings of the poor — from which they extracted 
great gain. It is said that the Sanhedrin, after ceasing to meet 
in the Lishcath Haggazith, or “ Hall of Square-stones,” J used 
to hold their assemblies in these Chanuyo th, whence — after the 
“ booths ” had been destroyed at the time of the murder of the 
younger Annas — they returned to Jerusalem. § The house of 
Annas as the most influential Sadducean and High-Priestly 
family, were mainly responsible for the invasion of the Temple 
courts by the greedy traffickers whom Christ drove forth both 
at the beginning and at the end of His ministry. 

I. THE TRIAL BEFORE ANNAS. 

It was into the presence of this cunning and powerful hier- 
arch that our Lord was first taken after the night arrest. Al- 
though Annas had ceased to be High Priest de facto , he was 
still regarded by strict Jews as High Priest de jure, as it was 
only by the Roman Governor that he "had been deprived of his 
office. Whether he still held any official position in the Sanhe- 
drin — such as Nasi (in the High Priest’s absence), or Chakam, 
or AN-beth Din — is uncertain, but in any case his influence was 
predominant, since all the highest functions were still carried on 
by his nearest relatives. Everything, therefore, depended on 
the view which Annas would take, and the course which he 
would approve, after his preliminary investigation of the charge 
against Jesus. 

The minor details are not narrated by the four Evangelists 
with sufficient precision to enable us to arrive at certainty ; but 

* Id. vii. 8. f Sanhedrin , f. 88, 2. 

X Rosh ffashanah, 3, 1, 6 ; Taanith, iv. 8. There is, however, much uncer- 
tainty about these ChanuySth. Derenbourg ( Palestine , p. 465) accepts the 
view that they were (at any rate originally ) on the Mount of Olives. They are 
•said to have been destroyed three years before the Fall of Jerusalem, id. p„ 
.468. 


THE TRIALS BEFORE THE JEWS. 371 


the majority of those who have written since the publication of 
my “ Life of Christ ” have come in the main to the same view 
as is there presented. Annas, who seems to be alluded to as 
“ the High Priest ” in St. John xviii. 19,* asked Jesus about 
His disciples and His doctrine. In thus acting he was adopting 
a course which was flagrantly illegal. He was acting as a sole 
Judge, though the Jewish rule was, “Be not a sole judge, for 
there is no sole judge but one’’ ; f he was conducting a private 
investigation, whereas Hebrew justice demanded the utmost 
publicity ; he was trying to entrap the accused by his own ad- 
missions, in spite of the distinct requirement that “ one man 
shall not rise up against a man for any iniquity” * It was 
against these gross violations of the law that our Lord made 
His calm and majestic protest, in return for which an insolent 
menial, unreproved by his vile superiors, first profaned with 
a blow of his brutal hand the face on which angels desire to 
look.f From this circumstance Jesus saw that the whole pro- 
ceeding was to be one glaring travesty of justice, and to these 
Jewish Priests and Sanhedrists, until adjured by the name of 
God, He uttered no further' word. This preliminary examina- 
tion was probably held between two and three o’clock at night. 

II. THE TRIAL BEFORE CAIAPHAS. 

No law was more stringent than the Jewish as to the neces- 
sity of assuming innocence until guilt was proved ; yet, as 
though Jesus had been a legally convicted criminal, Annas sent 
Him bound to Caiaphas. Another night examination, in defi- 
ance of Hebrew law, ensued ; and it is probable that Caiaphas 
was supported by at least a committee of Sanhedrists. J These 
unjust judges, instead of waiting till witnesses spontaneously 
came forward, deliberately sought for witness, and even for 

* Comp. John xviii. 23, 24. \ Pirqe Av 6 th, iv. 8 

\ Deut. xvii. 6, xix. 15 ; Num. xxxv. 30. 

§The Talmud complains of these Priests that “ their servants strike the peo- 
ple; with their rods ” (. Pesachim , 57). 

| Not the “Sanhedrin gedolah or “great Sanhedrin” of 70, but the 
“ Sanhedrin kethannah or “ smaller Sanhedrin ” of 23. 


372 


THE LIFE OF LIVES. 


false witness, against their victim. Yet, eager as they were to 
fix on Him some charge of blasphemy, the witnesses broke 
down. Their testimony did not agree. It was too flagrantly 
loose, discordant, and invalid to be used even by men bent on 
injustice and murder. At last false witnesses came whose tes- 
timony might seem to be more available. But the only definite 
charge which they could bring against Him was the “ sign ” 
which He had offered to His questioners in the first year of 
His ministry about rebuilding the Temple in three days. Some 
witnesses declared that He had said, “ I will destroy this T em- 
ple ” Others, that He had said, " T am amble to destroy this 
Temple.” In point of fact. He had used neither of these in- 
criminated phrases, but had said, “ Destroy ye this Temple, 
and I will raise it up in three days” ; in other words. Consum- 
mate your work, and I will accomplish Mine.* No other charge 
was brought against Him, and justice was again defied, since 
they called no witnesses in His favour. Still the accusation, 
indirect as it was, had broken down. Nor could they in any 
way establish the charge that Jesus was a Mesith — a “ seducer ” 
or “ misleader ” of the people. Caiaphas and his party began to 
feel that, after all, their enemy might escape from their clutches, 
in spite of their determination — in the cause, not of right, but 
of that “ expediency ” which they interpreted to be the main- 
tenance of their own unhallowed predominance and vile gains 
— to put Him to death. Moreover, they were perplexed and 
overawed by the majestic silence which Jesus maintained. They 
felt that His silence Avas their condemnation ; that the Accused 
was justly sitting in judgment on His own unjust judges. Yet 
they knew that His teaching, even if they could not bring it 
under the char'ge of constructive blasphemy, had involved 
claims of supernatural, though of purely spiritual, pre-emi- 
nence. What was to be done? How was the awful silence of 
the Accused, which shamed and overaAved their souls, to be 
goaded into speech ? There was but one way. It was disgrace- 
fully unfair, disgracefully illegal. But did that matter, when 

* Aware rov vaov rot>rov*(John ji. ig). Ye have begun to desecrate and under- 
mine the Temple by your greed and profanity. Complete your work ! 


THE TRIALS BEFORE THE JEWS. 373 

the night trial, and the private examination before Annas, and 
the seeking for false witnesses, and the suppression of any one 
to support the cause of the Accused, and every other feature in 
the entire proceeding, were equally unjust? The hard, worldly, 
unscrupulous High Priest came to their rescue. Defying the 
most initial principle of Hebrew Law — which was that no one 
was to be condemned to death on his own confession * — he 
made to Jesus a tremendous appeal. “ I adjure Thee by the 
Living God,” he cried, “ that Thou tell us whether Thou be the 
Christ, the Son of God.” So adjured, ouf Lord could not re- 
fuse to answer. He replied : “ Thou hast said : and hereafter 
ye shall see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of Power 
and coming in the clouds of heaven.” Then the High Priest, 
in well-acted mock agitation, cried, “ Blasphemy ! ” and rent his 
priestly Ketoneth of fine linen, and the assembly shouted, “ He 
is Ish Maveth!” (a man of death). Then followed the deris- 
ion by the menials of the Sanhedrin, during the time that 
elapsed before the morning of Friday when the full Sanhedrin 
could legally meet. But even this meeting was again illegal, 
for, after a preliminary condemnation, the Law required that 
a whole day should intervene before the final judgment. 

III. THE TRIAL BEFORE THE SANHEDRIN. 

At earliest dawn Christ was led before this full assembly 
of seventy members, assembled in the Beth Din, or House of 
Judgment.* He was set before them as a condemned criminal. 
There a similar scene occurred. The Sanhedrin desired to con- 
demn Him out of His own mouth ; and His most determined 
and unscrupulous enemies kept urging Him with the furious 
question, “Art Thou the Christ ? tell us.” He answered not. 
But at last, to end the unholy farce, He said, “ If I tell you ye 
will not believe. And if I also ask you ” — if I question you as 

* Mishna Sanhedr. vi. 2. The Jewish historian Jost admits that all the legal 
forms were disgracefully violated by these priests (Gesck. Judenth. i. 283, 403). 

f The Lishcath Haggazith, or Hall of Squares, seems to have been abandoned. 
They may have met in the Beth Midrash on the Chel or partition wall ; or in 
the Booths (See ante, p. 486). The details must remain uncertain. 


374 


THE LIFE OF LIVES. 


to your authority for these proceedings — if I press you also 
with questions — “ ye will not answer Me.” And they all said : 
u Art Thou then the Son of God?” And He said unto them, 
“Ye say that I am.” After that, He was once more formally 
condemned to death ; and as He had been derided and misused 
by knaves and menials, so now — which was harder to bear — 
He was coarsely insulted by Priests and Pharisees.* Although 
the merciful custom was to regard a condemnation to death 
by the Sanhedrin as a deplorable event, even when justice re- 
quired it — and so deplorable that after such a verdict the day 
should be spent in fasting f — they could not repress their sav- 
age delight at having at last got into their power the Prophet 
whom, again and again, they had vainly endeavoured to seize 
and slay. “ How is the faithful city become an harlot ! She 
that was full of justice ! Righteousness lodged in her : but now 
murderers.” ± 

So ended this shameful mockery of justice, illegal at almost 
every stage and in almost every particular. It was illegal (i) 
because it was conducted by night; (2) because the Hebrew 
Law required that every effort should be used to secure the 
acquittal of a prisoner, whereas every effort had here been used 
to secure his condemnation; (3) because witnesses had been 
sought for the accusation, and none called for the defence; (4) 
because after the witnesses had broken down — which ought to 
have been followed by the immediate acquittal of the Accused 
— Jesus had been adjured, by the name of God, to answer a 
question which might give the false judges an opportunity to 
condemn Him out of His own mouth; (5) because a claim 
which — setting aside its truth — was not blasphemy, or only 
constructive blasphemy — was treated as a capital offence; (6) 
because no proper interval of a full day was allowed to inter- 
vene between the hasty, illegal, night-condemnation before the 
Committee of Sanhedrists and the formal condemnation before 

* Matt. xxvi. 67. The word eK/uvKTT/p^u, subsannare y Haso suspendere, is 
expressive of the extremest scorn. 

f Bab Sanhedr ., f. 63, 1. 

$ Is. i. 21 ; 1 Thess. ii. 15. 


THE TRIALS BEFORE THE JEWS. 375 

the Sanhedrin as a body;* ( 7 ) because the Victim had been 
misused, smitten, insulted, without any interference, by the 
lacqueys of the Priests and by the Priests and Sanhedrists 
themselves; (8) because Jesus was tried on a capital charge on 
a Friday, not only on the day before the Sabbath (which was 
unlawful), but before a Sabbath which, as being at the be- 
ginning of the Passover, was in an unusually sacred sense a 
High Day.f 

* Sanhedrin , iv. i, v; 5 ; Scliurer, ii. I, p. 194. 


f John xix. 31. 


CHAPTER XXXVII. 


THE TRIAL BEFORE PILATE. 

“ Auctor nominis ejus, Christus, Tiberio imperitante, per Procura- 
torem Pontium Pilatum supplicio affectus erat.” — T ac. Ann. xv. 44. 

The account of the trial of Christ before Pilate, especially 
as given by St. John — brief though it is — is unparalleled in the 
whole world's literature for its vividness and verisimilitude. I 
shall not relate it at length, but only indicate its varying phases. 
How varied and agitating those phases were, and how power- 
fully the presence of Jesus, in His sleeplessness and misery, af- 
fected even so hard a heart as that of Pilate, may be seen from 
the fact that the Procurator, no less than three times, entered 
into the Prsetorium to question Jesus apart from His enemies 
(xviii. 33-37, xix. 1-3, 8-1 1), and made four or five strong 
and separate attempts to rescue One whom he recognised to be 
incomparably truer, nobler, and more innocent than the crowd 
of lying Priests, and the multitude whom they hounded to His 
destruction. 

The Jews had condemned our Lord to death, but, according 
to the best historic authorities, had no power to carry into 
execution their own decree. A tumultuary murder, like that 
of St. Stephen, might, indeed, have been overlooked by the con- 
tempt of Roman insouciance, especially in a matter wffiich the 
haughty Gentile rulers might despise as one of words, and 
names, and of Jewish law.* But the Priestly party could not 
have stoned Christ without many difficulties and dangers ; and, 
further, they desired to inflict on Him the most abject and 
awful form of death, which could only be sanctioned by the 
Romans. They wished also to overawe those whom they re- 
garded as His violent but deluded Galilean followers, by show- 

* Acts xviii. 15. 

376 


THE TRIAL BEFORE PILATE. 377 

mg that He was condemned by their Roman governors as well 
as by their religious authorities. Their object was to inflict 
upon Him an accumulation of shame and horrible agony which 
should be witnessed by the whole multitude assembled to keep 
the Passover. They thought that such a fate would finally ex- 
tinguish every attempt to represent Him as a Divine Teacher. 
And, as is always the case, they most effectually carried out the 
purposes of God by the human wickedness with which they 
strove to render them impossible. 

Besides all this, the matter was not one which could be hastily 
hushed up. It is evident that it had already come under the 
cognisance of Pilate, since otherwise they could not have used 
the Roman tribune and part of his cohort as agents in the ar- 
rest. 

1. While it was still early morning, therefore, the imposing 
body of High Priests, Priests and Sanhedrists, headed doubt- 
less by Annas and Caiaphas, accompanied Jesus to the tribunal 
of the Procurator. He was led — a bound and weary prisoner, 
after so many hours of sleepless anguish and excitement — 
across the bridge which spanned the Valley of the Tyropoeon, 
to the splendid Herodian palace now occupied by the Procura- 
tor.* Greatly as they feared and detested the Roman knight 
who had thrice been involved in deadly conflict with them and 
their nationj they assumed that they would easily overawe 
him by the pomp of their sacred authority. They thought noth- 
ing of , the guilt of shedding innocent blood; but since they 
meant that evening to keep the Passover, their religious scru- 
ples prevented them from facing the ceremonial uncleanness 
involved in entering a house from which leaven had not been 
removed. In scornful condescension Pilate came out to them 
from the Prsetorium. But he was clad in all the stupendous 

* It is, however, possible that Pilate may have been residing in Fort Antonia. 

f At an earlier time the Procurators only ruled for a year or two. Tiberius 
thought it safer, and kinder to the subject races, to employ them for a longer 
period (Tac. Ann. i. 80 ; Suet. Tiber. 32 ; Jos. Antt. xviii. 6, 5)- Valerius 
Gratus had held office for eleven years (a. d. 14-25) ; Pontius Pilate ruled for 
ten years (a. d. 26-36). 


THE LIFE OF LIVES. 


378 

power of the Roman Empire, being a direct representative of 
Tiberius Caesar, and he had, amid all his crimes, the stern 
sense of Roman justice which made him disdain to condemn to 
death a man in whose trial he had had no share. He knew what 
sort of men the Priests were, and had not the smallest respect 
for their profession of integrity. He asked them, “ What ac- 
cusation bring ye against this man ? ” This took them by sur- 
prise. They did not want a fresh trial ; they only wanted Pilate 
to crucify One whom they had brought to him as “a male- 
factor/’ When they suddenly told him that they had a law, and 
by their law He ought to die, Pilate’s contemptuous reply was„ 
“ Then deal with Him yourselves.” They reminded him that 
they had no power to put a man to death, and since the charge 
of “ blasphemy,” on which they had condemned Him, was one 
which Pilate would have disdainfully refused to examine, they 
heaped up a mass of false accusations, in which three are spe- 
cifically discernible, namely, that — 

(i.) He was a ringleader of sedition — a Mesith, or “de- 
ceiver,” who was seducing and perverting the nation. 

That charge broke down totally and ipso facto, for Pilate 
was perfectly well aware that there had been no tumult or signs 
of insurrection connected with the name of Jesus. He also 
knew well that none of the political rulers — not even the sus- 
picious Antipas, who lived close beside the central scene of the 
ministry of Jesffs — had ever made the slightest complaint 
against Him. 

(ii.) He had (they said) forbidden the people to give tribute 
to Caesar. 

This charge was a most flagrant falsehood, and was in fact 
the very reverse of the truth, since Jesus only two days before, 
when an attempt was made to entrap Him in the Temple, had 
openly said, “ Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s.” - 
It was also grossly hypocritical ; for they themselves abhorred 
the indignity of paying tribute to Caesar, and would have hailed 
any chance of throwing off the Imperial yoke. Pilate saw 
through their falsity, and it deepened his utter contempt for 
them. 


THE TRIAL BEFORE PILATE. 379 

(iii.) He had said that “ He Himself is Christ, a King.” 

This charge might be regarded as true in a sense , although, 
as they were well aware, it was not true in the sense in which 
they wished it to be understood ; and 

“ A lie that is half a truth is ever the greatest of lies.” 

They intended Pilate to understand the charge in a seditious 
and temporal sense, though they knew that Christ’s Kingdom 
was “ not of this world,” and had no bearing on Roman do- 
minion. If, however, they could get Pilate to accept unex- 
amined this accusation of / sa ma jest as, they felt that it was 
the most deadly which they could possibly bring. 

But Pilate was a Roman, and the Romans knew what justice 
meant. He would not hand Jesus over to death untried and 
uncondemned, and ordered Him to be led into the palace to 
be questioned, for he was amazed that He should have stood in 
calm silence amid these storms of furious false witness. He 
therefore put to Him the question, “Art Thou the King of the 
Jews? ” He received an answer such as confirmed the feeling, 
which became deeper in his mind every moment, that this was 
no ordinary prisoner, but a man of transcendent innocence, 
about whom some awful shadow of the Unknown seemed to 
hang. He heard from the lips of Jesus a gentle and courteous 
explanation as to the true nature of the Kingdom which He 
claimed. Pilate did, indeed, brush aside, with the hard, prac- 
tical shrewdness of a commonplace intellect, the allusion which 
Christ had made to “ the Truth.” This he probably regarded 
as a piece of harmless transcendentalism, with which he, a Ro- 
man Governor, had nothing to do ; but, filled with the convic- 
tion that the detested Jews were hounding to death One who 
was infinitely nobler than themselves, he strode out of the pal- 
ace again, and emphatically pronounced to the raging hierarchs 
his conviction that the Victim for whose blood they thirsted 
was absolutely innocent. 

2. Amid the roar of denunciations which this acquittal pro- 
voked, he heard the name “ Galilee,” and, catching at any straw 
to get rid of this bad business, inquired “ if the man were a 


380 


THE LIFE OF LIVES. 


Galilean ?” Being informed that He was, he sent Jesus to 
Herod. The Sanhedrists accompanied Him to the old As- 
monsean Palace in which Herod Antipas was living, and re- 
newed their vehement denunciations : — but there also Jesus 
maintained His unbroken silence. Why should He waste words 
on “ that fox ” ? * How could an adulterer, a coward, a slug- 
gish and cunning parasite, a murderer of the Prophets, com- 
prehend anything that He could say? 

Antipas could make nothing of Him, but evidently saw and 
knew enough to convince him that the whole accusation was a 
conspiracy based on lies. In his petulant vexation that Jesus 
would say nothing to him, he allowed his myrmidons to mock 
the Prisoner, but sent Him back to Pilate practically acquitted. 

3. The tumult, however, continued, and the guilty conscience 
and agitated career of Pilate made him anxious, if he could, 
while saving Jesus from death, to make some concession to this 
raging crowd of Jews hounded on by their religious leaders. 
He came out on the Bern, and again emphatically told the Chief 
Priests that both he and Herod saw clearly that they were try- 
ing to destroy an innocent man. Pilate — of whom it is a re- 
markable fact that the Evangelists speak far more moderately 
than Jewish writers like Philo and Josephus * — was, as Ter- 
tullian says, u jam pro conscientia sna Christianus.” Neverthe- 
less he was willing to scourge Jesus; to make Him no longer 
dangerous by so agonising and shameful a humiliation, and 
then to set Him free. 

4. This concession His enemies angrily rejected; and then, 
perhaps, he clutched at some suggestion that they might con- 
sent to set Jesus free in accordance with the annual act of grace 
by which he released a prisoner to them at the Passover. This 
was " the first step in that downward course of weakness which 
the world knows so well ; — a course which, beginning with inde- 

*Luke xiii. 32 ; Jos. Antt. xviii. 7. 

f Philo and Josephus are very severe (Jos. Antt. xviii. 3, 4; B.J. ii. 9 ; 
Philo Leg. ad Caiatn. § 38). Christian legends represent the ultimate suicide 
of Pilate as the result of his remorse. The Gospel of Nicodemus (ii. 13) goes 
so far as to speak of him as already “ circumcised in heart." 


THE TRIAL BEFORE PILATE. 38s 

cision and complaisance, passed through all the phases of alter- 
nate bluster, subserviency, persuasion, suasion , protest, com- 
promise, superstitious dread, conscientious reluctance, cautious 
duplicity, and other moral cowardice, until this Roman remains 
photographed for ever as the perfect feature of the unjust 
judge, deciding 

“ * Against his better knowledge, not deceived.’ ” * 

The Jews, however, shouted in favour o£ his releasing a no- 
torious criminal named Jesus Barabbas, a rebel and murderer, 
who had been guilty of the very' crimes of which they were 
f alsely accusing Jesus, and of crimes much more flagrant ! Pi- 
late, by his guilty and cowardly concessions, had only involved 
himself in more hopeless difficulties. He was still deeply un- 
willing to sacrifice an innocent man, who had inspired his cal- 
lous mind with a sensation of awe such as he had never felt 
before. This awe was intensified by the message brought to 
him on the tribunal from his wife, Claudia Procula, that “ he 
was to have nothing to do with that Just Man, since she had, 
that night, suffered many things in a dream because of Him.” f 
What justice required he had not a moment’s doubt ; but per- 
sonal fear, and the consciousness that Serious charges might 
be made against him by the Jew's, hung over him, and tempted 
him to the unwilling sacrifice of all that yet remained to him 
of nobler principle. He had publicly proclaimed that Jesus 
w'as innocent, yet — Roman as he was — in dread of the yelling 
conspirators, he degraded himself to the iniquity of handing 
Him over to death as guilty. 

At last the cry, “If thou let this man go, thou are not C cesar’s 
friend,” decided him. He dared not face the deadly jealousies 
and awful cruelty of the gloomy Emperor Tiberius, a man who, 
surrounded by the unscrupulous informers whom he encour- 

* Taylor Innes, The Trial of Jesus Christ , p. 93. 

f The name of Pilate’s wife is given in Nicephorus i. 30, and in the spurious 
Gospel of Nicodemus. 

% The charge of Jcesa majcstas was frightfully perilous. Tac. Ann. iii. 38 ; 
Suet. Tib. 61. 


THE LIFE OF LIVES. 


382 

aged, was torn to pieces by mad and reckless suspicion.* Dread- 
ing a delation of himself to this horrible tyrant, Pilate set Bar- 
abbas free, and ordered Jesus to be scourged. This scourging 
was a recognised preliminary to crucifixion, not an attempt to 
get Jesus spared out of pity; though after it had been inflicted, 
Pilate seized one more chance of getting the prisoner released, 
out of sheer compassion for an agony worse than death. f 

5. From that awful scourging, Jesus came forth mangled, 
bleeding, agonised, wearing the crown of torturing thorns, and 
clad in the war cloak of faded scarlet in which the soldiers had 
mocked Him; but still so unsurpassable in His majesty that 
even this hardened Roman general could only exclaim, “ Be- 
hold the Man!” But the unmoved Jews were still yelling 

Crucify ! ” “ Crucify Him yourselves,” said Pilate, “ for I 

find no fault in Him.” “ By our law,” they shouted, “ He ought 
to die, because He made Himself a Son of God” 

6. Here was a new and startling allegation ! Pilate could not 
but make one final effort. He caused Jesus to be led into the 
Judgment Hall of the palace once more, and asked Him in awe 
and amazement, <( Whence art Thou? ” Jesus answered not, 
but when Pilate, driven to anger, reminded Him that the power 
of life and death was in his hands, Jesus gently told him that 
“ he could have no power if it were not given him from above ; ” 
— then, half acquitting his own judge, He added, “ therefore he 
that betrayed Me to thee hath the greater sin.” Was it possi- 
ble that the multitude could still remain unaffected by the awful 
pathos of such moral and spiritual grandeur involved in such 
horrible misery? Pilate thought not. He led Him forth, and 
as he sat in his seat of judgment on the shining pavement, said, 
with awestruck accents: 

“ Behold your King!” 

The answer was a fresh clamour of “Crucify! Crucify! ” 
** Shall I crucify your King? ” asked Pilate. Then came the 
fatal and apostate shout which terrified him from pity and from 

* All the allusions in the classics (Hor. Ep . i. 16, 17 ; Sat. i. 3, 119 ; Juv. vi. 
478 ; Cic. Verr. v. 54, 66 ; Val. Max. i. 7, etc.; show the inconceivable horror 
of this cruel infliction, which frequently caused death (Plut. Coriol. 24, etc.). 


«► 

THE TRIAL BEFORE PILATE. 383 

justice, “ We have no king but Ccesar!” At that cry the last 
barriers of the Procurator’s conscience were swept away. In 
vain pretence of shifting the responsibility, he washed his 
hands as he sat on the tribunal before the people, and said, “ I 
am innocent of the blood of this Just Person! See ye to it.” 
Would whole oceans have washed away his guilt? Would not 
his hands rather have “ incarnadined the multitudinous seas ? ” 

“ Ah nimium faciles qui tristia crimina caedis 
Fluminea tolli posse putatis aqua.” * 

They cried, “ His blood be on us and on our children ! ” Then 
Pilate uttered the awful final words, “ Ibis ad crucem. I miles 
expe di crucem ” 

Pilate himself must have deeply felt the disgrace of being 
driven by personal cowardice into a flagrant and admitted vio- 
lation of that sense of the sacredness of justice which was the 
strongest moral conviction in the mind of every genuine Ro- 
man. He had tried every device he could. He had said : 

“Take ye Him, and judge Him ” (John xviii. 31). 

“ I find in Him no f atilt at all ” (xviii. 38). 

“ Will ye that I release unto you the King of the Jews ? ” (xviii. 39). 

“Behold I bring Him forth unto you that ye may know that I find 
in Him no fault ” (xix. 4). 

“ Behold the man ! ” (5). 

“ I find no fault in Him ” (6). 

•“ Behold yourJCing !” (14). 

“ Shall I crucify your King? ” (15). 

“ I am innocent of the blood of this Just Person. See ye to it ” 
(Matt, xxvii. 24). 

Yet, after all these declarations, a mere desire for personal 
safety — which proved to be perfectly useless] — made him con- 
descend to the infamy of rending asunder every dictate of his 
own conscience, and of giving up to death One whose perfect 
innocence he had so repeatedly declared. 

* Ovid. Fast. ii. 45. Comp. Deut. xxi. 6, 7. 


CHAPTER XXXVIII. 


THE SUFFERINGS OF JESUS, 

’’Elftaoihevcrev [a7rd tov — Ps. xcvi. IO. 

“ Crudelissimum taeterrimuque supplicium.” — ClC. Verr. v. 64. 

“Nomen ipsum Crucis absit non modoacorpore civium Romanorum, 
sed etiam a cognitione, oculis, auribus.” — ClG. fro Rab. 5. 

“ Quid dicam in crucem tolli ? Verbo satis digno tarn nefaria res 
appellari nullo modo potest.” — ClC. Verr . v. 66. 

To 7r aftoq xP L<JT °v VP& V drcaBeid eonv, kcu 6 Oavarog avrov r/fjt(l)v aOavaoia . — 
Athanas, De I near 71. 

It is difficult adequately to realise the multitude and variety 
of the forms of spiritual distress and mental anguish, of scorn, 
and torture, to which the sinless Son of Man was continually 
subjected from the time that He left the Mount of Olives to 
ente’* Jerusalem for the Last Supper.* 

1. At the Last Supper He had the heavy sorrow of reading 
the heart of the traitor, and of uttering His last farewells- — 
mingled with prophecies of persecution as the path to .final 
triumph — to those whom He loved best on earth. 

2. Then came the agony in the garden, which filled Him with 
speechless amazement and shuddering, until He had to fling 
Himself with His face to the earth in the tense absorption of 

* I will not again re-enter on the highly disputed questions which do not bear 
directly on my subject. I still, however, remain unshaken in the conviction 
that St. John rightly represents our Lord as crucified on Friday, Nisan 1 14 r 
the day before the actual Passover. It is impossible to believe that all the wild 
and hurried events of the trials and crucifixion took place on a feast day of 
special solemnity. To what I have said on an earlier page (p. 473, footnote) I 
will only add that Mr. Wright ( Some Neto Testatnent Problems') concludes that, 
as to the date, “ certainly is unattainable, but unless the ministry lasted about 
ten years, the most probable date of the Crucifixion is 9 a. m. to 3 p. m. on 
Friday, Nisan 14, A. d. 29, and Nisan 14 probably fell on March l8.” 

384 


THE SUFFERINGS OF JESUS. 385 

prayer, and His sweat was like great gouts of blood streaming 
to the ground. 

3. Then the horror of Judas’s over-acted traitor-kiss, the seiz- 
ure, the binding, the leading away, the desertion of Him by all 
His disciples in His hour of need. 

4. Then the long trials which, only broken by insult, lasted 
the whole night through; the sense of utter injustice; the proof 
that all those hierophapts who should have been the very first 
to welcome Him with humble yet triumphant gladness, were 
fiercely bent on destroying Him bv any means, however foul. 

5. Then the insolent blow in the face from one of the serv- 
ants.* * * § 

6. Then the hearing His chief Apostle deny Him with oaths 
and curses. 

7. Then the night trial before Caiaphas and his most confi- 
dential adherents, with all its agitating incidents, its tumult of 
sneering voices, its dreadful adjuration, and the sentence on 
Him as “ a Man of Death ” by the “ spiritual ” court. 

8. Then the accumulations of brutal insult as the crowd* of 
vile underlings mocked Him,* and slapped and beat Him,f and 
spat in his face,J and, bandaging His eyes,§ bade Him name 
the wretches who had smitten Him. 

9. Then the early morning trial before the whole Sanhedrin, 
with its continuance of agitating appeals, and the final proof 
that “ He had come unto His own possessions, and His people 
received Him not.” 

10. Then, if we read the record rightly, another derision by . 
the Priests and Sanhedrists. 

11. Then the long and thrilling scenes of the trial before 
Pilate, as He stood in the center of a crowd thirsting for His 

* John xviii. 22. The word pamapa is used both for a blow with the fist and 
a blow with a rod. 

f Luke xxii. 63, kvenai^ov avrcJ depovroc. 

% Luke xxii. 63, dipovrer ... 6 -Kaiaaq ; Mark xiv. 65, KoTiafaeiv ; Matt xxvi. 
67, eKo'Xdfjuaav . . .eparcioav. 

§ Matt. xxvi. 67, EveKTVoav Eig to TrpdauTcov. 

jj Luke xxii. 64, 7 C£pKd?,vipavTe<; avrov ; Matt. xxv. 67. 


386 THE, LIFE OF LIVES. 

blood, yelling for His crucifixion ; heaping lies and insults upon 
Him ; preferring to Him the robber and the murderer ; defeat- 
ing, by their ferocious pertinacity, the obvious desire of the 
Roman Governor to set Him free. 

12. Then the leading through the city to Herod, and the 
vain attempt of that despicable prince to wring some answer 
or some sign from Him. 

13. Then the coarse derision of Herod’s myrmidons || as, in 
mock homage, they striped Him of His own. garments and ar- 
rayed Him in a shining robe, with every accumulation of dis- 
dainful insolence and cruelty. 

14. Then the final sentence of crucifixion, pronounced by 
Pilate after vain appeals and efforts to overcome the furious 
animosity of His accusers. 

15. Then the brutal mockery by the whole band of Roman 
soldiers as He stood helpless among them. These coarse le- 
gionaries were only too much rejoiced to pour on Him the con- 
tempt and detestation which they felt for all Jews,* and seized 
the opportunity to vent their callous savagery on One who, as 
they were taught to believe, had claimed to be a King. This 
King should have the insignia of royalty — a cast-off military 
sagum of scarlet ;f a crown — only twisted of torturing thorns ;% 
a sceptre — a reed which they could every now and then snatch 
out of His tied hands, and beat Him with it as well as with 
rods; the mock homage of bended knees varied by execrable 
spitting, § and blows on the head, and slaps on the face with the 
open palm, and words of uttermost contempt. 

16. Then He was mangled and lacerated almost to death by 
the horrible and excruciating flagellum, inflicted by execution- 
ers who had no sense of pity, with scourges loaded with balls 
of lead and sliar-pointed bones. [| 

* Luke xxiii. 1 1 , £^ov 0 ev 7 /aa(; . . . ifnrai^aQ . . . TrepifiaTixov toBf/ra XafiTrpdv. 

f See Jos. B.J. 11, 12, v. 11 ; Antt. xix. 9. 

% Matt, xxvii. 28, vSa kokicw/v. 

§ Matt, xxvii. 29, ore<f>avov £{; anavQCov. 

| Matt, xxvii. 30; Mark xv. 19. This was regarded by the Jews with special 
loathing (Num. xii. 14 ; Deut. xxv. 9 ; Is. 1 . 6). 

IT John xix, 1 ; Luke xxiii. 16 ; Matt, xxvii. 26. Hor. Sat. 1, 3, 119 ; Apul. 
Metam. viii. 


THE SUFFERINGS OF JESUS. 387 

17. Then came the stripping bare of the robes, and the bend- 
ing under the load of the cross — or rather, of its patibulum — 
the transverse beam of the cross, which He was too much ex- 
hausted to carry, while the herald went before Him proclaim- 
ing the supposed crime for which He was condemned. 

18. Then the sight of the weeping and wailing daughters of 
Jerusalem.* 

19. Then the driving of the lacerating, crushing nails 
through His feet, and through either hand, and the uplifting on 
the cross, that “ servile,” “ infame” “ crudelissintum,” “ tceterri- 
mum “ extremum” “ supplicium” 

20. Then the sight of all the world’s worst vileness flowing 
beneath His eyes in its noisy stream, as the Elders, in their 
heartlessness, wagged their heads at Him, and jeered, and blas- 
phemed ; f and the soldiers mocked, and the crowd howled their 
insults, and the two wretched robbers who shared with Him 
that hour of shame — though they were guilty and He was in- 
nocent — joined in the continuous pitiless reviling.f 

21. Then the sight of His mother in her unspeakable desola- 
tion. 

22. Then the darkening by anguish of His human soul, 
which wrung from Him the cry, “ My God, My God, why hast 
Thou forsaken Me?” 

Yet, amid all these accumulations of anguish, only one word 
of physical pain was wrung from Him — the cry, “ I thirst ” * 
— and so deep was the impression caused by His majestic pa- 
tience, as well as by the portents which followed, that the whole 
crowd was overawed and hushed, and returned to Jerusalem 
beating their breasts, and saying, “ Truly, this was- a righteous 

* Luke xxiii. 27. 

■f To what awful depths of decadence these formalising hierarchs must have 
sunk before they could be capable of conduct so execrable may be illustrated 
by the fact that King Alexander Jannaens met with universal reprobation from 
the Jews when he adopted crucifixion as a mode of punishment (Jos. B.J. 
i. 4 , 5 . 

X Mark xv. 29 ; Luke xxiii. 35 ; Matt, xxvii. 44. 

§ He had refused to drink the stupefying potion offered to Him before His 
crucifixion (Matt, xxvii. 34 ; Mark xv. 23 ; Ps. lxix. 21). 


388 


THE LIFE OF LIVES. 


man ; ” and the penitent robber implored Him to receive him 
into His Kingdom ; and even the Pagan Roman centurion spoke 
of Him as “ a Son of God.” f 

The uttermost depth of superhuman woe seems to be re- 
vealed by His cry, " My God, My God, why hast 
Thou forsaken Me?” But it has often been pressed 
to unwarrantable conclusions. The twenty-second Psalm 
was doubtless present to his mind as a whole, when 
He hung in the extremity of His lonely anguish ; 
and it should never be forgotten that David’s cry of de- 
spair is but the brief human prelude to the expression of utter- 
most trust, and to the outpouring of confident hope and tri- 
umphant praise. If in the “ burning fiery furnace ” of Nebu- 
chadnezzar the Spirit of God was to the Three Children as “ a 
moist whistling wind,” we are not warranted in pressing the 
quotation by our Lord of one sad verse of a Psalm of which the 
gladness and trust no less than the sorrow must have been pres- 
ent to His mind, though He only uttered aloud the first verse 
of it. Nor must it be overlooked that, if one of the seven ut- 
terances from the Cross expressed spiritual anguish, and an- 
other the extreme of physical torment, all the other five were 
words of love, of forgiveness, and of triumph. The first was 
the prayer for His murderers ; the second was the promise to 
the pardoned penitent ; the third, the tender provision for the 
future of His mother : then came the “ Why dost thou forsake 
me? ” and “ I thirst ;” but they were followed by the one loud, 
triumphant word, “ teteXegt(xi” “ It is over for ever ! ” and 
the ejaculation, “ Father, into Thy hands I commend My 
Spirit,” with which He bowed His head, and yielded up His 
human life.* “ With a word,” says Tertullian, “ He volun- 
tarily gave up His Spirit, anticipating the duty of the execu- 
tioner.” “ He died,” says St. Augustine, “ because He willed 

* In Luke xxiii. 47 it is “ Certainly this was a righteous man.” This in any 
case was the meaning of the centurion’s exclamation. See Wisd. ii. 18. 

f The words n apeduKev to tt vevpca (John xix. 30). atyrjKev to Tzvevfia (Matt, 
xxvii. 50), £^£7Tvevoev (Mark xv. 37), seem to imply a voluntary yielding up of 
His life. See Bishop Westcott on John xix. 30. 


THE SUFFERINGS OF JESUS. 389 

it, when He willed, as He willed.” The blood and water 
which burst from His riven side did, indeed, constitute a proof 
of death, but were a symbol of life and regeneration — of “ the 
cleansing from sin and the quickening by the Spirit which are 
both consequent on the death of Christ.” 


CHAPTER XXXIX. 


THE RIGHT VIEW OF CHRISTAS SUFFERINGS. 

“ The Fair Shepherd layeth down His life for the sheep.” — John x. n. 

It must be admitted that the Church — not, indeed, the Early 
Christian Church, but the Church after some six or seven cen- 
turies had elapsed, and most of all amid the dense and ever- 
deepening superstitions and aberrations of the Middle Ages — 
has no Scriptural or primitive warrant for its deification of 
pain for its own sake. That was an outcpme of Eastern 
Manichaeism. “ Suso,” we are told, “ used to lie in a miserable 
hole, on an old door for a bed, and in the depth of winter 
thought it a sin to approach the stove for warmth. He used 
to tear himself with iron tags for scourges ; and “ though filled 
with a feverish thirst, with the waters of the Lake Constance 
sparkling on all sides round his monastery, he would often pass 
the whole day without suffering a drop to moisten his lips.” 
One of the sayings of “ John of the Cross,” was, “ Whatever 
you find pleasant to soul or body, abandon. Whatsoever is 
painful, embrace it.” Such examples and such precepts are 
founded in absolute error, and are totally alien from the teach- 
ing of Christ and His Apostles. .They are a distortion of the 
true meaning of self-denial and self-conquest, and have often 
led to results the exact opposite of those which they were sup- 
posed to promote. Such examples do not, after all, represent 
a self-torture and self-maceration so severe as those which are 
inflicted on themselves by many a brainless iclolator. They are 
alien importations into true Christianity: They are utterly un- 
like the example set by Christ. They represent an ordinance- 
ridden will-worship which becomes a direct intensification alike 
of bodily and mental temptations. “ Have not the loosest of 
men,” asks Dean Milman, “ been often found with the rough- 

390 


RIGHT VIEW OF HIS SUFFERINGS. 391 

est sackcloth swathing their limbs ; the proudest with bare feet, 
and the cord around their loins ; the most cruel among those 
who have most severely mortified their own bodies? Monks 
have ever been the most ready and remorseless executioners 
of persecution. Quench the habitual affections, in the long 
run you quench humanity/’ * 

The anguish which Christ endured for our sakes was not • 
self-sought. Though voluntarily endured as an inevitable por- 
tion of His great self-sacrifice, it was inflicted on Him by the 
wickedness of men, and could not have been avoided except at 
the impossible cost of swerving from the path of duty or 
righteousness. Under such conditions our Lord showed us 
by His example that any accumulation of anguish is to be pre- 
ferred to the slightest abandonment of the cause of true holi- 
ness. But neither was any portion of his sufferings self-in- 
flicted, nor (as we have seen) did it involve a lifetime of self- 
maceration. 

The notion that mirth and pleasure are in themselves sinful 
is an idle superstition. The cross which we are to take up is 
not one of our own devising, but only the cross which God 
may see fit to lay upon us. Nor must we forget that all sorrow 
which is not self-sought and not self-inflicted has its own 
boundless and eternal consolations — as it had so abundantly for 
our Blessed Lord. 

It is again a serious error to separate, or rather to isolate, 
the death of Christ from all His life, as though on His cleath 
alone, and not on His Incarnation and his whole life, depended 
the work pf our salvation. “ Non hoc prcecipuum amicorum 
munns est ” admirably said the dying Germanicus,” prosequi 
de function ignavo qucestu , sed quce voluerit meminisse, 
quce mandaverit exsequi.”* True sorrow for our lost ones is 

* 14 The ascetic theory of Christian virtue,” says Dr. Bruce, “ which so soon 
began to prevail in the Church, has been tested by time and proved to be a 
huge and mischievous mistake. The verdict of history is conclusive, and to 
return to an exploded error, as some are disposed to do, would be an utter 
folly” {Training of the Twelve, p. 249). See Isaac Taylor’s Ancient Chris- 
tianity. 

f Tac. Ann. ii. 71. 


392 


THE LIFE OF LIVES. 


best shown, not by idle wailings, but by active accomplishment 
of their wishes and continuance of their work. 

Most of the erroneous notions which have been thrust into 
the forefront of the religion of erring Churches have been built 
on the isolation from their context of separate texts or phrases, 
which thus are robbed of their proper historic meaning. In fa- 
vour of lives of ascetic self-torture, some have quoted the words 
of our Lord, “ Whosoever shall seek to gain his life shall lose 
it, but whosoever shall lose his life shall preserve it,” or “ bring 
it to a new birth.” How important this utterance was is 
proved by the fact that our Lord repeated it on four separate 
occasions, and that it is (alone of all his sayings) recorded by 
all four Evangelists. The words involve the duty of absolute 
self-sacrifice when it is required in the cause of God ; the duty 
of bearing and of braving all that God sends to us when we are 
walking in the paths of His service. To interpret them of self- 
indicted miseries and macerations is to wrest them from their 
context; to rob them of their real and deep meaning; to di- 
vorce them from the example personally set to us by Christ’s 
own life ; and to make them the basis of false systems. What- 
ever God sends or requires we must gladly bear ; He will send 
all that is necessary to train and ennoble us : it is nothing but a 
faithless folly to invent needless miseries for ourselves . 5 * 1 

An isolated phrase, or emotional expression, unless it har- 
monise with the whole body of sacred teaching, is misused and 
perverted when it is treated as though it were a complete reve- 
lation. Now in the New Testament the death of Christ is 
never thrust into exclusive prominence. “ It is Christ that 
died,” says St. Paul, " yea , rather, that was raised from the 
dead, who is at the right hand of God, who also maketh inter- 
cession for us.” ' Non Mors, sed voluntas placuit sponte mori- 
entis /’ said St. Bernard. “ Christ’s death,” says Dr. Little- 
dale, “ in ancient Christian theology, did not pervade by any 
means so much space as it has done for several centuries past ; 
but it was regarded as a single incident — of transcendent im- 
portance indeed, but still only a single incident — in the great 
* Matt. x. 39, xvi. 25 ; Luke xvii. 33 ; John xii. 24, 25. 


RIGHT VIEW OF HIS SUFFERINGS. 393 

chain of events from the Incarnation to the Ascension. Suffer- 
ing in itself is valueless and works no deliverance.” The suf- 
ferings of Christ on the Cross, which could barely wring one 
cry of anguish from the Sufferer, were necessary because of 
man’s vileness, selfishness, and sin, and were caused by the 
most awful object lesson which could havebeen given of the per- 
versity of false religion. But they were a revelation not of de- 
feat but of victorious majesty. They indicate “ the measure 
of our need, and of Christ’s sympathy; the destruction of the 
selfishness of man, the consummation of the counsel of God.” 
The Italian poet and ecclesiastic Tomaso Campanella (as trans- 
lated by John Addington Symonds) writes — 

“ If Christ was only six hours crucified. 

After few years of toil and misery, 

Which for mankind He suffered willingly, 

While Heaven was won for ever when He died ; 

Why should He still be shown on every side, 

Painted and preached in nought but agony, 

Whose pains were light, matched with His victory. 

When the world’s power to harm Him was defied? 

Why rather speak and write not of the realm 
He rules in Heaven, and soon will bring below, 

Unto the praise and glory of His name? 

Ah ! foolish crowd ! This world’s thick vapours whelm 
Your eyes, unworthy of that glorious show, 

Blind to His splendour, bent upon His shame.” 

Campanella here wrote in strictest accordance with the views 
of primitive Christianity, and indeed of all the purest Chris- 
tain thought for many centuries. All early Christian art is 
joyous. There is not a single Latin cross, much less a repre- 
sentation of the crucifixion, before the days of Constantine. 
The earliest known Latin cross is on the tomb of Galla Placidia 
at Ravenna, a. d. 451. The early Christians would have re- 
garded a crucifix as an audacious profanation of the awful 
majesty of Him who now sitteth for ever, as Eternal God, on 
the throne of His glory. Even St. Gregory, when He sent to 
Oueen Theodolinda an ampulla on which was painted the scene 
of Golgotha, had the two robbers represented nailed to their 


394 


THE LIFE OF LIVES. 


crosses; but by the side of the cross of Christ kneel two an- 
gels, and the cross is empty, while over it is the image of Christ 
in glory* But in ancient art, for six centuries after Christ, 
painters did not venture to go so far even as this. In the 
Church of St. Apollinaris at Ravenna are painted consecutive 
scenes of the Life of Christ; but they end with Pilate washing 
his hands, and from that scene they pass — as they do on many 
sarcophagi — at once to the Resurrection. “ It may well be 
doubted,” says Bishop Westcott, whose authority as a theolo- 
gian none will question, “ whether the Crucifixion is, in any 
immediate shape, a proper subject for art. The image of tfie 
dead Christ is foreign to Scripture. Even in the record of the 
Passion death is swallowed up in victory. And the material 
representations of what St. John shows to have been life 
through death, perpetuate thoughts foreign to the Gospel.* ” 
And again he writes, “ We must not for one moment rest in the 
images of outward dissolution. We must keep together in 
closest union the Resurrection and the Passion ; Easter Day and 
Good Friday, Life and Death. The Crucifix and the Dead 
Christ obscures our faith. Our thoughts rest not upon a dead, 
but upon a living Christ. The closed eye and the bowed head 
are not the true marks of Him who reigns from the Cross, who 
teaches us to see through every sign of weakness the fulfilment 
of His own words, f I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto 
Myself /* The Cross is a revelation not of humiliation but of 
majesty.” One reading of Ps. xcvi. io was efia6i\ev6ev ano^ 
rov P,v\ov, Regnavit a ligno.* 

* An early Christian gem in the British Museum represents across which has 
become a living Tree, with a dove resting upon it. 

f Victories of the Cross, p. 96 ff. 

f In support of the parallel revelation of glory and suffering he refers to John 
vi. 14 and 60-71 ; Matt. xvi. 13 ff., 21 ff., xvii. 24 ff., xx. 17-29, xxi.; Luke xix. 
17 ff. ; John xiii. 31, xvi. 33, xviii. 6 ^ff. , xx. 9 ; Luke xxiv. 17 ff. See, t6o, 
Religious Thought in the West, p. 338. “ It was felt that the realistic treat- 

ment of Christ’s Person could not but endanger the living sense of the Majesty 
which the Church had learnt to realise.” On the early Christian sarcophagi, as in 
many of the pictures drawn by Christians in the catacombs, Christ is ideally and 
symbolically represented, not as a livid and distorted sufferer, but as a radiant boy. 

§ Just. Mart. Dial c . Tryph. § 73. 


RIGHT VIEW OF HIS SUFFERINGS. 395 

Utterly vain and futile is the wailing over the brief hours 
of physical sufferings which were but the episode of an Eternity 
of Glory. The Cross was Christ’s throne. He speaks of His 
Crucifixion as His glorification. “ The hour is come that the 
Son of Man should be glorified.” In answer to His prayer, 
“ Father, glorify Thy name,” came a Voice from heaven, “ I 
have both glorified it, and will glorify it again.” And when 
Judas went out to betray Him, He said, “ Now is the Son of 
Man glorified, and God is glorified in Him ; and God shall 
glorify Him in Himself, and straightway shall He glorify 
Him.” It was thus that He overcame the world and will draw 
all men unto Him. 

Centuries ago so true a saint as St. Bernard — monk and 
ascetic as he was — warned men, though in vain, of “ the error 
and the danger of extending the sufferings of Christ either in 
body or mind into the reign of His glory.” Any contempla- 
tion of the Cross which inspires us to do all and bear all for 
His sake who died for us and rose again, is right ; but the arti- 
ficial heresy of sobbing over the five wounds of the crucifix 
by way of Pity for the Eternal God is not in accordance with 
anything in Scripture.” Those who lived nearest to the day 
of the Crucifixion, those who saw the Risen Lord with the 
marks of His wounds upon Him — did not indulge themselves 
by moaning in abject sorrow over His recent anguish. On the 
contrary — recognizing that the revelation of suffering was co- 
incident with the revelation of redemption, they were filled 
with a constant and superabounding joy. And why? Be- 
cause “ His loneliness is the breaking up of our solitude ; His 
mourning our comfort; His thirst our supply; His weakness 
our strength. If we want power, we have the power of the 
Cross ; if wisdom, we have the wisdom ; if peace, we have the 
peace of His Cross. Thus is Christ crucified a treasure to His 
Church, full of all, sufficient provision both for its necessity and 
delight.” * 

* Bishop Reynolds, A. d; 1639. Meditations on the Sacrament , pp. 25-33. 
See on this subject Hausrath ii. 250 ff . ; Wendt ii. 225, 233 Schttrer IP. ii. 
184-187. 


CHAPTER XL. 


THE ATONEMENT. 

“ My mystery is for Me, and for the sons of My house.” — Unwritten 
Saying of Christ. Clem. Alex. Strom, v. io, 64. 

“ Learn to say, I do not know.” — Rabbinic Saying , 

•** ‘ Cur’ et ‘ quomodo ’ exitiales voculae.” — Luther. 

Many and serious are the misapprehensions, or purely one- 
sided views, respecting the whole doctrine of the Atonement. 

(i) How false, for instance, and not only tm-scriptural but 
an //-scriptural, is the teaching which represents the supposed 
wrath of God the Father as only averted by the mercy of God 
the Son — a view represented in such lines as those of Sir Henry 
Wotton — 

■“ One rosy drop from Jesus's heart 
Was worlds of seas to quench God's ire" ; 

or of Dr. Watts — 

•“ Rich were the drops of Jesu^s blood 
That calmed God's frowning face 
That sprinkled o’er the burning throne, 

And turned the wrath to grace.” 

No epithet but “ deplorable ” can be given to the sort of 
theology which thus disintegrated the entire conception of the 
Trinity, and regarded the Father and the Son as actuated by 
antithetic impulses. 

(ii.) How unwarranted, again, is such anthromorphism 
as was habitually used till very recent times in the crude and 
ignorant language of many sermons. As Dr. Campbell rightly 
said, “ The Scriptures do not represent the love of God to man 
as the effect, and the Atonement as the cause , but just the con- 
trary ; the love of God as the cause, and the Atonement as the 

39 6 


THE ATONEMENT. 


397 


«. effect.” Men have made themselves “-enemies of God ” (Rom. 
v. io), blit the attitude of God to man even in his worst aber- 
ration and lowest fall is always described as an attitude of for- 
bearance and tenderest love. It is not “ Perish, as you deserve, 
under the fury of My hatred ” ; but it is “ Turn ye, why will ye 
die? Nor is it said, as in the erroneous rendering of our Au- 
. thorised Version, that God forgave us “ for Christ’s sake,” but 

which is indefinitely more blessed — that ’God in Christ’” 

forgave us our sins. “ There was no wrath in God which was 
j not in Christ ; and no mercy in Christ which is not in God.” 

(iii.) Again, what entirely false conceptions have been 
mixed up with the notion of what is called “ vicarious suffer- 
ing.” How alien from true theology are the juristic and for- 
. ensic theories introduced by St. Anselm, though he substituted 
them for the preposterous, age-long perversion that God had 
paid the ransom of Christ’s sufferings to the Devil ! Anselm 
only introduced a fresh error in representing that Christ suf- 
fered, as .our substitute, in order to reconcile God's justice zvith 
His compassion — as though they were conflicting elements in 
the mind of God! The Bible never and nowhere represents 
the Death of Christ as effecting any change in the mind of God. 
“One is the kindness of their mercy as the sentence of their 
justice,” said the Pope St. Leo the Great, ‘ “ nor is there any 
division in action where there is no diversity’ 1 in will.” Its doc- 
trine is one of free forgiveness, not of vicarious punishment, 
nor does it once use the popular phrases of “ vicarious,” “ sub- 
.stitution,” “ satisfaction,” “expiation,” or “ imputed right- 
eousness ” ftior does it ever say that Christ saved us from the 
penalty due to our sins ; nor that His death was a penalty at all. 
It is only by a wooden literalism ; by turning rhetoric into logic; 
'by mistaking the impassioned utterances of emotion for the 
formal statements of rigid reasoning; by extorting boundless 
conclusions out of isolated metaphors which only touch the 
subject at- a single point; and by building inverted pyramids of 
■ system on the narrow apex of single texts, that the whole mean- 
ing of the Atonement has been radically obscured. 

(iv.) Fully admitting, and believing, all. the mysteries which 


THE LIFE OF LIVES. 


398 

may lie under the word “ propitiation/’ we yet see that, as re- 
gards God the Father, the sufferings of Christ, who was Him- 
self Very God of Very God, are beyond our apprehension. If 
we pretend to explain them, we shall 

“ Find no end, in wandering mazes lost.” 

But when we think of the suffering and death of Christ, in their 
relation to men,, we shall find them the source of hope, of joy, 
and of deliverance. Among many theories on the subject, 
some have regarded the sufferings of Christ as “ simply inci- 
dental to His prophetic office.” * Some theologians regard 
them as mainly expressive of Christ’s sympathy as a revelation 
of divine self-sacrifice to win the hearts of men.* Some look 
on the death simply as the crown of a life of obedience, and 
unbroken fellowship with the Father, set forth as an example. £ 
More common than these is the theory of “ equivalent substitu- 
tion,” which is based on the futile desire to give logical dis- 
tinctness to anthropomorphic metaphor. It should be enough 
to say, without any attempt “ to soar up into the secrets of the 
Deity on the waxen wings of the senses,” that Christ offered 
for us all one sacrifice for sins for ever, by the perfect ex- 
ample of self-surrender to the Divine will which He gave as 
the representative of our race ; and that thus, in a way far be- 
yond our power to explain, He became “ the propitiation for 
our sins, and not for ours only, but also for the whole world.” § 
“ The doctrine of the Atonement,” says Prof. Mozley, “ parts 
company with the gross and irrational conception of mere 
naked material substitution of one term for another, and it 
takes its stand upon the power of love.” 

We must, then, be content to accept the death of Christ as a 
transcendent fact which we cannot categorise under syste- 
matically logical forms. It is set forth in varying metaphors 
which admit of varying interpretations, and which indicate its 

*Socinus, Robertson, Ritschl. I borrow the brief summary from Bruce^ 
The Humiliation of Christ , p. 350. 

f Abelard, Bushnell. 

X Some of the Fathers. Also Schleiermacher, iEving Maurice. 

§ 1 John ii. 2. 


THE ATONEMENT. 


399 


results as regards us men and our salvation, not the incompre- 
hensible mystery of its exact place in the Divine councils. 
These metaphors are diverse, and cannot be rigidly harmon- 
ised with each other. They cannot be treated as “ literal 
equivalents of spiritual truth.” The author of the Epistle to 
the Hebrews writes much about sacrifices ; but all that he thinks 
it reverent to say when he comes to speak of the death of 
Christ is that “ it became God ” — it was fitting that God — “ in 
bringing many sons to glory should make the author of their 
salvation perfect through sufferings ” ; * and that, as every 
Jewish High Priest offered gifts and sacrifices, “ it is necessary 
that this High Priest also have somewhat to offer.” f But not 
once in the New Testament are we told that Christ saved us 
from the punishment due to iniquity, or that His death was “ a 
punishment ” at all. The metaphors of Is. liii. are applied by 
St. Matthew to His healings of the sick. “ In the whole Jew- 
ish ritual,” says Archdeacon Norris, “ there is no trace of the 
idea that sacrifices were meant to reconcile the offender to 
God by the death of the Innocent in the place of the guilty.” 
By the “ blood ” of Christ is meant always the essential life of 
Christ. ± It would be well if theologians would bear in mind 
the warning of Bishop Butler that “ all conjectures ” about the 
manner of Christ’s Atonement “ must be, if not evidently ab- 
surd, at least uncertain.” 

In conclusion, then — passing over the monstrous errors of 
nearly a thousand years from Irenaeus to St. Anselm, and from 
St. Anselm to the present day, when the Atonement has been 
represented as a forensic transaction between the Father and 
the Son — we must say that Scripture describes the Atonement, 
not in its inmost essence, which surpasses our powers of appre- 
hension, but in its effects. I gnorando cognoscitur. “ Scrip- 
ture,” says Bishop Butler, “ has left this matter of 
the satisfaction of Christ mysterious, left somewhat in it un- 
revealed.” Let it be enough for us that “ God was in Christ, 
reconciling the world unto Himself (2 Cor. v. 19) ; and that, 

* Heb. ii. 10. f Heb. viii. 3. 

\ Corap. Bishop Westcott on 1 John i. 7, and Ep. to the Hebrews , p. 287. 


400 


THE LIFE OF LIVES. 


as regards its results , “ God set forth Christ to be a propitia- 
tion ” (Rom. iii. 25). The three great creeds of Christendom 
carefully avoid all attempts to express the significance of the 
Atonement by any rigid formulae of explanation; they do not 
build figurative illustrations into huge edifices of dogmatic the- 
ology.* They are content to indicate that “ after a certain ad- 
miserable manner ” — but how, we are unable to define — the Life 
and Death of Christ, as one great eternal whole, were “ a full, 
perfect, and sufficient redemption, propitiation, and satisfaction 
for all the sins of the whole world ” ; and that “ there is none 
other satisfaction for sin but that alone/’ In this sense we 
may say with Hooker,* “ Let it be counted folly or fury, or 
phrensy, or whatsoever, it is our wisdom and our comfort ; we 
care for no knowledge in the world but this, that man hath 
sinned and God hath suffered ; that God hath made Himself the 
sin of men, and that men are made the righteousness of God.” 

* The variety of the expressions used to indicate the effects of Christ’s death 
(/cara/May#, Ivrpov, lluoTTjpiov , ilaop.bg) shows that the mode of our deliverance 
is left undefined apart from its results. This will appear more plainly if any 
one will search out the Old Testament for the uses of the term of which these 
Greek words are the rendering — namely *133 (Ex. xxi. 30, xxix. 36, xxxii. 
30; Lev. i. 4, iv. 20; Num. xvi. 46, xxv. 13; 2 Chr. xxx. 18 ; Ezek. xiv. 
15). “ the mercy seat” (Lev. xvii. 11). 

f Sertn. ii. 6. For a fuller and closer examination of the doctrine of the 
Atonement, I must refer to my papers in “ The Atonement \ a Clerical Sym- 
posium;” and in The Christian World of November 16, 1899. 


CHAPTER XLI. 


THE RESURRECTION. 

“ Yet though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now know we 
Him so no more."— 2 Cor. v. 16. 

“ Christ is risen ! Christ is risen ! 

He hath left the cloudy prison, 

And the white-robed angels glimmer mid the cerements of His grave : 
He hath smiten with His thunder 
All the gates of brass asunder, 

He hath burst the iron fetters, irresistible to save ! ” 

— F. W. F. 

The history of ‘Christianity proves that it is far from being 
so easy as it might seem to keep “ the due proportion ” of the 
faith. If we would know Christ aright we must not isolate 
one part of His teaching to the exclusion of the rest, nor must 
we emphasise one part of His life and work in such a manner 
as to exclude the due significance of the whole. To do this 
is, as I have said, to make the same mistake as is committed by 
so many when they fix on a single text or even word of Scrip- 
ture, and use it in such a way as to nullify its meaning as well 
as the meaning of all the rest of Scripture. The New Testa- 
ment, I must once more urge, does not teach us to look at 
Christ’s death only, but always to regard it in due connexion 
with His Incarnation, His revelation by His life, and words, 
and works. His Resurrection, His Ascension, His eternal exul- 
tation at the right hand of God. The one-sidedness of party- 
systems of theology has partly arisen from failure to catch the 
due shade of meaning in St. Paul’s words, “ For I determined 
not to know anything among you, save Jesus Christ, and Him 
crucified The emphasis of the statement lies in the words 

* 1 Cor. ii. 2 ; Phil. iii. 8. 

401 


402 


THE LIFE OF LIVES. 


“ Jesus Christ ” : the words “ and Him crucified ” are added 
because the crucifixion was to the Jews a stumbling-block and 
to Gentiles foolishness, as it was to all “ the perishing.” It was 
necessary, therefore, to insist on the truth that the very Christ, 
in all “ the glory of the only begotten of the Father,” was none 
other than the man Christ Jesus, whom Priests and Romans 
had nailed to the Cross, so that the Crucified Teacher was one 
with the Risen Saviour, the power and wisdom of God.f St. 
Paul’s own practice shows that, rightly as he gloried in the 
Cross of Christ, he did not make it the sum-total of his teach- 
ing, nor did he identify man’s Atonement with the death of 
Christ only, but with all that He was, and all that He did. 

Our Lord Himself taught the devoted, impassioned Mag- 
dalene, in the first great lesson which He uttered after His Res- 
urrection, that the time for the ecstasies of human affection was 
over. He said to her, “ Cling not to Me.” If the Scriptures 
had been duly studied and understood, those words alone ought 
to have sufficed to condemn the emotional sensuousness — un- 
scriptural, unprimitive, uncatholic — of going on hands and 
knees to kiss crucifixes, and adoring the five wounds. St. Paul 
expressed this lesson with almost startling plainness when he 
said, “ From henceforth I know no man after the flesh. Yea, 
though I have known Christ after the esh, yet henceforth know 
I Him no more ” In other words, the Qirist of S,t Paul was 
no longer an agonised victim, but an Eternal King, requiring 
our love and service, but exalted infinitely above all need of, or 
desire for, our compassion. “ What do you mean by a likeness 
of Christ ? ” wrote Eusebius of Caesarea to the Empress Con- 
stants. “ Not of course the image of Him as He is, truly and 
substantially ; nor yet of His human nature as it has been glo- 
rified, of which the Transfiguration in its overpoyering splen- 
dour offered some pledge or likeness. . . . Since we con- 

fess that our Saviour is God, and Lord, we prepare and purify 
our hearts to see Him. And if, before that Vision which shall 
be face to face, you value likenesses of the Saviour, what better 
artist can there be than the God-Word Himself?” 

* i Cor. i. 24, ii. 8. 


THE RESURRECTION. 


403 


In point of fact, the Resurrection holds a place at least as 
prominent as the Crucifixion in the teaching of the Apostles and 
Evangelists. St. Matthew dwells on its glorious majesty; St. 
Mark on its reality ; St. Luke on its spiritual necessity; St. John 
on its influence over men. They are careful never to let Christ’s 
sufferings absorb the thoughts of Christians in such a way, or 
to such an extent, as to obscure the sense that, though 
for our sakes He passed through the brief moment of 
suffering and death. He desires not our pity, but our 
endless adoration, as the Divine King, seated On the 
throne of His Eternal Glory. Christ had taught them that 
they who are accounted worthy to attain the world to come 
are sons of God, being sons of the Resurrection ” * He had 
said, “ / am the Resurrection and the Life.” f It was the con- 
dition of the Apostolate to have been a witness of the Resur- 
rection. i The cause of the first persecution by the Priests and 
Sadducees was that the Apostles “ proclaimed in Jesus the res- 
urrection from the dead.” § St. Paul woke the ridicule of the 
Stoics and Epicureans at Athens because he preached “ Jesus 
and the resurrection ” || When he was seized and imprisoned 
at Jerusalem, it was “ concerning the resurrection of the dead ” 
that he was called in question, and because he had preached 
“ that the Christ must suffer, and how that He first by the res- 
urrection of the dead should proclaim light both to the people 
and the Gentiles.” He began his Epistle to the Romans by 
the declaration “ that Christ Jesus was declared to be tlie Son 
of God with' power by the resurrection of the dead.” ** In one 
of the most glorious chapters of all his Epistles, he based man’s 
hope of resurrection exclusively on the resurrection of Christ.f f 
He tells the beloved Philippians that his own desire is “ to 
know Him, and the power of His resurrection, and the fellow- 
ship of His sufferings, becoming conformed until His death, if 
by anv means we may attain unto the resurrection of the 


* Luke xx. 34-36. 
f Acts i. 22. 

|| Acts xii. 18. 

** Rom. i. 4. 


f John xi. 25. 

§ Acts iv. 2. 

Acts xxiii. 6, xxiv. 21, xxvi. 23. 
f f 1 Cor. xv. 


404 


THE LIFE OF LIVES. 


dead.”* When he says (Rom. viii. 34), “It is Christ Jesus 
that died, yea rather, that was raised from the dead, zvho is at 
the right hand of God who also maketH intercession for us,” 
it is almost as if he foresaw, and wished to correct, any partial 
onesidedness in our conception of Christ. The whole Epistle 
to the Ephesians had been rightly described as “ the Epistle of 
the Heavenlies,” the Epistle of the Resurrection; and to the 
Corinthians he said, “If Christ hath not been raised, your faith 
is vain.” t St. Peter’s first utterance to the Elect of the Dis- 
persion is to thank “ the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who 
beget us again unto a living hope by the resurrection of Jesus 
Christ from the dead.” J The predominant thought of all the 
early Christian teachers was “ Jesus, whom God raised up.” 

It was the stupendous fact of the Resurrection of Christ by 
Plis own Divine Power — a fact which the Jews regarded as 
impossible — which changed the whole character of the Apostles, 
and uplifted them from what they had been — timid, and dull, 
and even half faithless — to what they became as the inspired 
teachers and converters of the world ; the heralds of the world’s 
last aeon ; the proclaimers and appointed founders of the king- 
dom which shall have no end. The Resurrection, as we have 
seen, was “ no mere accessory of their message, but the sum and 
the centre of the message itself.” They grasped, if- millions of 
Christians have failed to do so, the meaning of the angel mes- 
sage, “ Why seek ye the Living among the dead ? He is. not 
here; He is risen, as He said” They did not preach a dead- 
Christ, but rather a Risen Christ ; not a lost Christ, but a Christ 
ever Present ; not one who was habitually to be regarded as a 
tortured and agonising sufferer, but one who liveth for ever- 
more, and imparts to us His life and His joy, so that in the 
midst of death, we are still in life. They had been but as chil- 
dren, full of wavering misapprehension and timidity, because 

*Phil. iii. 10, 11. 

fSee Acts ii. 24, iii. 15, 26, iv. 10, v. 30, x. 40, xiii. 30, 33, 34, 37, xvii. 31; 
Rom. iv. 24, 25, vi. 4, 9, vii. 4, viii. 11 ; 1 Cor. vi. 14, xv. passim ; 2 Cor. iv. 
14 ; Col. ii. 12, iii. 1 ; Gal. i. 1 ; Eph. i. 20 ; 1 Thess. i. 10 ; 1 Pet. i. 21. 

X 1 Pet. i. 3. 


THE RESURRECTION. 


405 


“ as yet they knew not the Scripture that He must rise again 
from the dead/’ * After the Resurrection they sprang into the 
full stature of men, because then first they began fully to ap- 
prehend all that Jesus was as “ the only name under heaven, 
given among men whereby we must be saved.” When Jesus 
finally parted from them at the Ascension they returned to Jeru- 
salem " with great joy .” f All things had become new to them. 
They saw that the awful humiliation of apparent defeat was 
but the work of a self-sacrifice infinitely fruitful ; that the death 
of Christ, immediately followed by His resurrection, was the 
inauguration of a new and the final aeon in the world’s history, 
in which God would not only be among them, but dwell in 
them, and walk in them. It was in this conviction that they 
went forth in Christ’s name, conquering and to conquer. 

Hence the Resurrection, together with the Incarnation, forms 
the most central event in the history of the world. It was the 
glorious consummation of all the past, the splendid inaugura- 
tion of all that was most precious in all the future. And it 
should be noted that not only is it said that “ God raised Christ 
from the dead ” (Gal. i 1), but also that Christ did not hesitate 
to attribute it also to His own divine power. “ Destroy ye this 
Temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” 

St. Paul clearly saw, and decisively argued, that man can 
have no pledge of his immortality apart from the resurrection of 
Christ. If Christ has not risen, we shall not rise. Liie be- 
comes not worth living if it be but a term of affliction, and pro- 
gressive decay, and constant sorrow; which ends with itself, and 
brings no hope whatever of a purer and happier existence be- 
yond the grave. Life then becoms frail and futile, and there 
is no hope of redress. The terrible picture of the poet would 
then be no exaggeration — 

“ Lo ! 'tis a gala night, 

Within the lonesome latter years! 

An angel throng, bewinged, bedight 
In veils, and drowned in tears, 


John xx. 9. 


f Luke xxiv. 52. 


406 


THE LIFE OF LIVES. 


Sit in a theatre, to see 
t> A play of hopes and fears, 

While the orchestra breathes fitfully 
The music of the spheres. 

Mimes, in the form God on high, 

Mutter and mumble low ; 

And hither and thither fly — 

Mere puppets they, who come and go 
At bidding of vast formless things, 

That shift the scenery to and fro, 

Flapping from out their condor wings 
Invisible woe ! 

But see, amid the mimic rout,. 

A crawling shape intrude — 

A blood-red thing that writhes from out' 

The scenic solitude ! 

It writhes ! it writhes ! With mortal pangs 
The mimes become its food, 

And the angels sob at vermin fangs 
In human gore imbued. 

Out — out are the lights ! — out all ! 

And over each quivering form 
The curtain, a funeral pall, 

Comes down winh the rush of a storm ! 

And the angels, all pallid and wan, 

Uprising, unveiling, affirm 
That the play is the tragedy Kfaw r 
And its hero the Conqueror Worm..”" 

If Christ never rose from the dead, this awful vision would 
have elements of deep reality. If Christ be not risen from the 
dead, and we are yet in our sins, our faith is vain, and they that 
have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. All that is most 
glorious, most beautiful, most inspiring, most holy in the 
thought and progress of the world has risen, directly or indi- 
rectly, from faith in Christ. If He was crucified and did not 
rise, the Apostles were false witnesses of God, and the world's 
loftiest hopes were impossibly built upon a delusion, and all 


THE RESURRECTION. 


407 

that is best slips from us into dust and ashes, and Time be- 
comes 

“A maniac scattering dust, 

And life a fury slinging flame.” 

Had it not been for the Resurrection, no defeat of all that is 
divine in the life of man could have been more complete than 
was involved in the Crucifixion ; and therefore the evidences of 
the Resurrection were, by God’s mercy, made overwhelming. 
There was not in all the world’s history — there was not even 
in the age-long history of the Jewish people — the slightest an- 
ticipation of such a possibility as that One who had died, could 
win the complete victory over death, and say to the world, “ I 
am He that liveth, and was dead, and behold I am alive for 
evermore.” Jesus had foretold to His disciples that He would 
thus rise ; but they did not receive or understand His prophecy. 
It did not touch their “ unbelief and hardness of heart.” In 
spite of such prophecies they had not the faintest expectation 
that any such thing would take place. Nay, when the women 
and Mary Magdalene reported that they had seen Him, they 
regarded such statements as mere women’s talk.* Not till they 
had gone into the empty sepulchre did any gleam of hope enter 
into the hearts of their leaders, Peter and John. When He 
had appeared to all the Apostles except Thomas, Thomas still 
refused to believe. Not till He had opened their eyes — not till 
they had again seen, and heard, and their hands had handled 
the Word of Life — not till “ He showed Himself alive to them 
by many infallible proofs, being seen of them and speaking of 
the things pertaining to the kingdom of God ” f did they begin 
to apprehend that their Lord had broken the bonds of death, 
“ because He could not be holden of it.” Then, indeed, they 
were taught to see that the Resurrection, so far from standing 
alone, was the crowning event of the history of all the past; 
the opening of the history of all the future/ even to the con- 
summation of the ages ; the sole hope of the life of all the 

* A f,pog, “ babble,” Luke xxiv. 11. The word occurs here alone In the New 
Testnment. 
f Acts i. 3. 


408 


THE LIFE OF LIVES. 


world ; and the sole explanation of all its mysteries. Absolutely 
and finally convinced, they became the irresistible heralds of the 
last Dispensation, and before thirty years had elapsed they 
had everywhere proclaimed Jesus, and the mystery of His 
death, and the Power of His resurrection as the Power of an 
endless Life. 

Could anything short of so immense a divine interposition as 
the Resurrection, and the subsequent outpouring of the Spirit, 
have accounted for the faith which overcame the world; the 
faith by virtue of which the Jewish Dispensation, now that- it 
had waxed old, was swept away ; the faith on which has been 
founded for ever that Universal Church of Christ which is “ the 
blessed company of all faithful people ; ” the faith which gave 
a wholly new glory and meaning to human life ; the faith on 
which was founded the perpetuity of the Christian sacraments, 
and the observance of the Lord’s Day ; the faith which wrought 
righteousness, subdued kingdoms, stopped the mouths of lions, 
quenched the violence of fire; the faith which so transformed' 
the nature of man by the constraining love of Christ, that when 
the Pagan mobs yelled “ Christianos ad leones ” the weakest 
boy could answer with exultation Christianus sum ; the faith 
which was in no wise affected by the earthquakes which shook 
the Roman Empire to the dust; the faith which converted and 
swayed the wild hordes of northern barbarians, and inspired 
them with the thoughts and aims which have achieved all that 
is greatest in modern civilisation ; that faith which even, most 
marvellous of all, has survived the gross falsities which have 
been taught, and the hideous crimes which have for centuries 
been committed, in its name; which has succeeded in bursting 
out of the foul dungeon in which it had been imprisoned by 
priestly usurpers ; which has shaken off the influence of cen- 
turies of mediaeval impostures, ignorance, and corruption; 
which has even outlined the infamies of the Inquisition, and 
of the Moloch fires kindled in the name of Christianity by its 
falsest representatives in spite of its plainest teachings, to 
sicken into loathing the hearts of all who worshipped Christ in 
sincerity and truth? 


THE RESURRECTION. 


409 


Hence we see that the recorded evidences of the Resurrection 
do not stand alone. St. Paul, within a few years of the death 
of Jesus on Calvary, tells us how Pie was seen of Cephas; of 
the Twelve; of about five hundred brethren at once, of whom 
the majority were living when he wrote; of James; of all the 
Apostles ; and, last of all, of him, also as of the abortive-born 
of the Apostolic band.* The Evangelists narrate to us how 
He appeared to the women at the Sepulchre, and to Mary Mag- 
dalene, and to the Ten Apostles, and to other disciples with 
them, to all of whom He gave His great Commission ; and to 
the Eleven Apostles when Thomas was with them ; and to the 
two disciples on their way to Emmaus; and to Peter, John, 
Andrew, Philip, and Bartholomew, on the old familiar shore 
of the sea of Galilee ; and to the Eleven on the mountain in Gal- 
ilee; and, possibly at the same time, to a multitude of more 
than five hundred disciples when He bade them go and make 
disciples of all the nations. Besides these eleven recorded ap- 
pearances, He appeared doubtless on other occasions “ by the 
space of forty days,” and (apart from the visions seen by St. 
Stephen and St. Paul) He showed Himself last of all to the 
assembled disciples when He parted from them to continue His 
visible intercourse with them on earth no more. 

This, surely,, is distinct, decisive, and varied evidence; yet 
it acquires a thousandfold greater force from the fact that, so 
far from standing alone, it is charged with the deepest moral 
significance;, that it is only the fraction of a vast whole; that it 
corresponds with all that we know of the nature and purposes 
of God ; that it accords with our faith in all God’s workings in 
the past which found their completion in the Incarnation ; that, 
apart from it, all which has followed for well-nigh two thou- 
sand years would be inexplicable ; that it is our sole positive 
pledge of the immortality which makes us instinctively feel 
that we were not born to die for ever ; that it transfigured the' 
whole nature of the Apostles, and alone rendered possible that 
work which has issued in the potential, and will issue in the 
final, regeneration of the world ; that it has visibly affected all 
* 1 Cor. xv. 5-8. 


4io 


THE LIFE OF LIVES. 


the subsequent destinies of the human race ; that in it alone does 
the whole meaning - of Christ’s mission find its accomplishment 
and the secret and the explanation of its universal triumph. 

It is evident that our thoughts are turned exclusively to the 
reality , not to the modes or details of this mightly consumma- 
tion of our Lprd’s work. No eye witnessed the Resurrection. 
The earthquake, and the vision of a white-robed angel with 
countenance like lightning who had come and rolled away the 
stone, and sat upon it, had terrified the guards, and made them 
as dead men ; but neither they, nor any believer, saw the Christ 
Himself rise out of the sepulcher. The angel told the women 
that He had already risen, and invited them to see the place 
where the Lord lay. Particulars and incidents of the actual 
miracle were wisely — let us say, rather, under the guidance of 
the Holy Spirit — left undescribed by the Evangelists. They did 
not admit of description. But the brief and reverent records 
show us that the mortal body of Christ was already changed, 
and was no longer subjected to the limitations of ordinary hu- 
manity. The Resurrection was something wholly different 
from other “ raisings from the dead,” like that of Lazarus. It 
was a Resurrection which, by Christ’s inherent Godhead, finally 
overcame death, and him who, in one sense, has the power of 
death — that is the Devil.* 

The Resurrection-body of the Lord had been in some way 
transformed .* He was not immediately recognisable by Mary, 
or by His disciples on the way to Emmaus, until by His voice 
or His action He made Himself known to them. Whendhe as- 
sembled Apostles first saw Him they were terrified, and thought 
they saw a Spirit. Even when He appeared to the five hundred 
or more brethren on the mountain in Galilee, “ some doubted.” 
Nor was His body any longer subject, to the ordinary laws of 
nature. He appeared and disappeared. He passes through the 
closed door and suddenly stands in the midst of them. The 

* Heb. ii. 14 (comp. Rom. v. 12 ; John viii. 44). In Wisdom ii. 24, we 
read, “ Through envy of the Devil came death unto the world.” The Devil is 
identified with the Serpent of Paradise. 

f Mark xvi. 12, etpavepudr/ ev erepg popfirj. 


THE RESURRECTION. 


41 1 

forty days of His earthly manifestations were, so to speak, an 
initial form of the ascended life. He was something more than 
He who, wont to stray, 

“ A pilgrim in the world’s highway, 

Oppressed by power and mocked by pride — 

The Nazarene, the Crucified.” 

“ Cling not to Me,” He said, “ for I have not yet ascended 
to the Father; but go to My brethren and say to them, I am 
ascending to My Father and your Father, and to My God and 
your God.” “ I am ascending ” (avafiaivao) ; the passing into 
the Father’s presence, there to reign with Him, world without 
end, had already in one sense begun. 


CHAPTER XLII. 


THE ASCENSION. 

The Ascension was the natural and necessary completion of 
the Resurrection, but there are two different points of view from 
which it may be regarded. 

That Christ “ ascend into the heavens ” is, of course, the 
belief of all Christians. Our Lord had asked, “ What and if ye 
shall see the Son of Man ascending where He was before ? ” * 
Almost the earliest words of the Risen Christ were, “ I have 
not yet ascended to the Father ; I am ascending to My Father 
and your Father, and My God and your God.” St. Paul, in 
the Epistle to the Ephesians, speaks of Him as “ He that as- 
cended far above all the heavens ; ” f and says “ that He was 
received up in glory.” $ The Epistle to the Hebrews describes 
Him as “ having passed through the heavens,” and “ having be- 
come loftier than the heavens.” § But this language is neces- 
sarily anthropomorphic, seeing that heaven is no more physi- 
cally above our heads than it is beneath our feet. Heaven is a 
state, not a locality. It has 

“ No limits, nor is circumscribed 
In one self place.” 

It is the abode of the Omnipresent God, who has neither 
body, parts, nor passions, but is everywhere, and filleth all 
things with all things. When we speak therefore of Christ’s 
Ascension, we mean primarily that He withdrew Himself from 
physical manifestations to His servants on earth, in order to 
bestow on them that nearer, more intense, more spiritual pres- 
ence — that indwelling which was more blessed and more ex- 
pedient for them — which began with the promised gift at Pen- 
tecost. Since that time Christ is with us even to the end of the 
*John vi. 62. \ Eph. iv. 10. 

% 1 Tim. iii. 16. § Heb. iv. 14. and vii. 26. 


412 


THE ASCENSION. 


4i3 

world. God’s temple on earth is no longer a material structure 
in Jerusalem, nor is it the human body of His Incarnate Son: 
it is the heart of all true believers.* This is, henceforth, the 
earthly abode of Him who loves, 

“ Before all temples, the upright heart and pure." 

Besides this belief in the Ascension, it is regarded, by many, 
as the termination of Christ’s ministry by the visible rising 
from earth upwards through the air in the presence of His dis- 
ciples. So the scene is often represented in Christian Art, and 
most notably in the famous picture of Raphael. It is doubtful 
whether this view is correct, or whether the Ascension can be 
properly represented by Art. That the special mode in which 
Christ left the earth was not meant to occupy a prominent place 
in our thoughts is proved by the fact that it is scarcely alluded 
to in the Gospels. St. Matthew does not mention it. In St. 
Mark it only occurs in the spurious addition made to the Gos- 
pel, whether by Aristion or another, and there it is only al- 
luded to in a mixed puotation from 2 Kings ii. 11, “ He was 
received into heaven ; ” and Psalm cx. 1, “ and sat on the right 
hand of God : ” — an allusion which does not bear at all on 
any visible rising through the air. There is no narration of 
the event in St. John, but only the general references which I 
have quoted. The sole authority for the material scene is St. 
Luke, and even in St. Luke the reference is vague and very 
brief. He merely says that, after the last farewells of Jesus to 
His beloved followers, “He stood apart from them ” The 
words which follow, “ and was borne up into heaven,” are al- 
most certainly spurious, as they are not found in the best and 
earliest manuscripts. 

The only other reference is in the Acts of the Apostles, where 
we are told that, after His last words, “ He was taken up, and 
while they were looking on, a cloud received Him out of their 
sight” If we interpret the first word (exf/pSp) in the general 
sense, and combine it with the “ stood apart from them ” of the 
Gospel, we might suppose that Christ simply vanished from 
the presence of His loved ones into an overshadowing and shin- 
* 1. Cor. iii. r6, vi. 19 ; 2 Cor. vi. 16 ; Eph. iu2i, 22. 


4H 


THE LIFE OF LIVES. 


in g cloud. They all understood that it was the final parting, 
the end of earthly companionship ; but as they stood with faces 
upturned towards the sky, which they regarded as the Throne 
of God, the Angel said to them, “Ye men of Galilee, why stand 
ye gazing up into heaven ? ” He whom “ a cloud had received 
out of their sight” should return in the clouds of heaven, in 
the human form which he had for ever united to His Godhead. 

All authority was given unto Him in heaven and on earth, 
and now they were to go and make disciples of all nations, bap- 
tising them into the name of the Father, and of the Son, and 
of the Holy Ghost ; “ teaching them to observe all things what- 
soever He had commanded them ; ” and “ lo, He would be with 
them all the days even unto the consummation of the age.” 
Thenceforth grace was given “ unto each one of us according to 
the measure of the gift of Christ j wherefore He saith — 

“ When He ascended on high, He led captivity captive, 

And gave gifts unto men.” 

We have seen, then, that the manner of the Ascension is 
barely more than referred to, and only in general terms, by a 
single Evangelist. Similarly, in the Epistles the actual rising 
heavenwards is nowhere narrated, and the references are all to 
the heavenly super-exultation.* But the fact of the Ascension 
of Christ “ far above all heavens ; ” — the fact that having left 
the earthly life, He is seated for ever at the right hand of the 
Majesty on High; — underlies the whole Christian revelation. 
It is the basis of all our faith and all our hope. 

“ The very God ! — think, Abib ! — dost thou think ? 

So the All-Great were the All-Loving too — 

So, through the thunder comes a human voice, 

Saying, 4 O heart I made, a heart beats here ! 

Face, My hands fashioned, see it in Myself. 

Thou hast no power, nor may’st conceive of Mine ; 

But Love I gave thee, with Myself to love, 

And thou must love Me, who have died for thee.’ ” f 

* Eph. iv. 8-10 ; Heb. iv. 14, vii. 26 ; 1 Pet. iii. 22 ; 1 Tim. iii. 16. “ In 

itself,” says Prof. Dewar, “the Ascension is no more than a point of 
transition.” 

f Browning, Men and Women (Ep. of Karshish), 


CHAPTER XLIII. 

THE FINAL ISSUES. 

“ Securus judicat orbis terrarum.” 

“ The World was only created for the Messiah.” — Sanhedrin. 
f. 98, 2. 

“ '0 Qavfiaoag fiaotlevaei ml 6 fiatnXevaaq avana^oerat, — Clem. Alex. Strom . 

ii. 9, 45- 

“ Amem Te plusquam me, nec me nisi propter Te.” — Imitation 
Christi. 

“ In Him was Yea.” — 2 Cor. i. 19. u , 

“ If this counsel or this work be of men it will be overthrown 1 ; but if 
it is of God ye will not be able to overthrow it ; lest haply ye be found 
eVen to be fighting against God.” — Acts v. 39. 

How little did the Sadducean hierarchy and the Pharisaic 
externalists grasp the real significance of the deadly crime 
which they had committed ! How little did they recognise that 
this deed of theirs, designed to maintain their party falsities, 
was the beginning of the awful end of the whole Jewish dis- 
pensation ! Very shortly after the Death of Christ Caiaphas 
was deposed. Pilate was recalled, banished, and overwhelmed 
with disaster, dying at last by his own hand at Vienne in Gaul.* 
Antipas was deposed, and condemned and banished. The Em- 
peror Tiberius died with a soul haunted by the demons of crime 
and misery. In the lifetime of many who had taken part in the 
awful tragedy, the House of Annas was destroyed, and his last 
son murdered. Jerusalem was besieged and went through 
spasms of inconceivable horror. It sank into a hell — a city of 
despairing madmen and raging cannibals.* The Temple was 
desecrated and burned into a blackened ruin; the Jews were 

* 7 xoiKikaiq irefu-rreocxy avp^opalq, Euseb. Chron. p. 78 ; H. E. ii. 7. 
f See Jos. B. J. v. 6, vi. 10 ; Renan, IJ 'Antichrist, p. 506. 

4^5 


416 


THE LIFE OF LIVES. 


crucified in such thousands that wood failed to provide crosses 
for them; the Holy City became a frightful desolation, unrec- 
ognisable by those who visited it; the Jewish system of religion 
was obliterated for ever. 

“ Vengeance ! thy fiery wing their race pursued, 

Thy thirsty poniard blushed with infant blood, 

Roused at thy call, and panting still for game, 

The bird of war, the Latian eagle came. 

“ Then Judah raged by ruffian discord led, 

Drunk with the steamy carnage of the dead ; 

She saw her sons by dubious slaughter fall, 

And war without, and death within the wall. 

Wide-wasting Plague, gaunt Famine, mad Despair, 

And dire debate, and clamorous strife was there. 

Love, strong as Death, retain’d his might no more, 

And the pale parent drank her children’s gore. 

* * * * * * 

Ah, fruitful now no more ! an empty coast, 

She mourn’d her sons enslav’d, her glories lost ; 

In her wide streets the lonely raven bred, 

There barked the wolf, and dire hyaenas fed.” 

Yes! from the hour when the Priests and Rabbis of a dor- 
rupted and hypocritic religion, consisting of outward forms 
and inward falsity, had achieved their crowning iniquity, began 
“ the long, endless, hopeless history of Jewish decadence, and 
the historic and terrible corruption which, under the co-oper- 
ation of tyrannous emperors, puppet kings, carnal patriots, and 
spiritually festering masses of the people, lasted for a genera- 
tion, only to close with the frightful coup de grace given by 
Titus’s destruction of Jerusalem.” The death of Christ was the 
close of an age-long Dispensation : — it was “ the consummation 
of the age : ” — the close of all the previous aeons of the world’s 
history; the beginning of the last aeon, and of the end of the 
world. 

If ever God by the whole course of human history has set 
the seal to the truth of a Divine Revelation, it is in the progress 
of all the ages since Christ died. The history of Christianity 


THE FINAL ISSUES. 417 

has been a history of advancing victories. It has brought new 
life into a weary world. It has been as a regenerative force, 
not only to multitudes of men of the loftiest minds, but to 
Paganism in all its forms. “ Old things have passed away ; be- 
hold, they have become new.” Christ has revealed such a 
knowledge of God as was wholly unknown to the earlier world. 
What word of his has failed? God has granted to mankind a 
new Life, and “ that life ” is — not in systems, or shibboleths, 
or churches, or priesthoods, but only “ in His Son.” “ Neither 
is there salvation in any other ; but in every nation he that fear- 
*eth God and doeth righteousness is accepted of Him.” 

Even those who do not unreservedly accept the belief in 
Christ’s Godhead, yet confess that “ with reference to religion, 
He remains to us the highest we know and are able to con- 
ceive ; ” that “ in the domain of the inner relations of Godhead 
and Humanity He has reached the extreme and unsurpassable 
stage of union ; ” that “ the anxious inquiry after something 
higher in achievement and personal character must be relegated 
to silence as a Dream, and as a subtlety unworthy of a reasonable 
being; ” that “ the prejudices and the weakness of thousands of 
years fell into ruins before His masterwork ; ” that “ the relig- 
ious consciousness reached its acme and high personal great- 
ness in the Founder of Christianity.” * History has given 
decisive proofs, to repeat words cited earlier in this volume, 
that “ Christianity is the crown of all the revelations of God, 
and that Jesus is the chosen of God, God’s image, and best-be- 
loved, and master-workman, and world-shaper in the history of 
mankind.” f 

How could the Almighty have given more decisively the 
Witness of History to Christ ? How could He have shown more 
finally “ that it was the good pleasure of the Father that in Him 
should all the fulness dwell,” and “ through Him to reconcile 
all things unto Himself, having made peace through the blood 
of His Cross; through Him I sav, whether things upon the 
earth, or things in the heavens ’ ?tHow could God more de- 
cisively have evinced to man that “ He is our peace, who hath 
*E. Zeller. fKeim, vi. 426-436. % Col. i. 19, 20. 


4 1 8 


THE LIFE OF LIVES. 


made both one, and brake down the middle wall of partition, 
having abolished in His flesh the enmity, even the law of com- 
mandments contained in ordinances ” ? * When we try to ex- 
plain and formulate the exact way in which Christ’s life and 
death procured our deliverance, we pass far beyond the region 
of human logic ; yet it may be given to every one of us to know 
and feel, with a reality which passeth knowledge, that Christ 
has “ blotted out the bond that was against us by its ordinances, 
which was contrary to us ; and H,e hath taken it out of the way, 
nailing it to the Cross : ” and that “ having put off from Him- 
self His body. He made a show of the principalities, and the 
powers, triumphing over them in it.” f 

Those verses represent, in the language of Scripture, the 
blessedness of personal salvation. The progressive conse- 
quences of the Life and Death of Christ over all the world are 
written plainly in “ all the volumes vast ” of Human History. 
Since His Resurrection, and as its direct consequence, 

“ A new created world 
Springs up at God’s command.” 

The conception of “ Holiness,” unknown to the ancient world 
of Paganism, became thenceforth a conception familiar to man- 
kind. Read all the literature of the ancient heathen world, and 
though here and there you find a noble and righteous man, it 
would be difficult to find even one in the long ages of the story 
of Greece and Rome to whom you could apply the epithet 
“ holy.” Nozv we may trust that there is scarcely a village, 
scarcely a family, which has not been blessed by visible fulfil- 
ments of this divine ideal. In ancient days life was but a brief 
vision haunted by the grim specter of death. The cry of de- 
spair rose from innumerable hearts. Man seemed to be but 
GKiaS ovap, the dream of a shadow. The future life was but 
the dim guess of a few. Shakespeare asks — 

“ Who would these fardels bear, 

To grunt and sweat under a weary life, 

But that the dread of something after death — 

* Eph. ii. 14, 15. 


f Col. ii. 15. 


THE FINAL ISSUES. 


.419 


That undiscovered country from whose bourn 
No traveler returns— puzzles the will, 

And makes us rather bear those ills we have 
Than fly to others that we know not of ! ” 

But that dread of death has an effect most salutary, for it 
teaches us that life is a thing too* solemn and sacred to be dese- 
crated by vile pleasures, or frittered away in frivolous pur- 
suits. And when Life, in the realisation of its immortal dig- 
nity, is devoted to high and worthy ends, it reflects a light from 
heaven — a “ light that never was on sea or land.” It is transfig- 
ured by the thought that, as we have been planted in the like- 
ness of Christ’s death, so shall we be also in the likeness of 
His Resurrection. These convictions have made the humblest 
human life blessed and precious. The common conviction of 
antiquity was that life was not worth living, and many a senti- 
ment of ancient philosophers might be summed up in the lines 
of the unhappy poet — 

“ Know that, whatever thou hast been, 

’Tis something better not to be." 

But, in place of the natural apathy and utter hopelessness 
even of Stoicism, Christianity has taught us, day by day, to 
thank God for our creation and preservation, as well as for all 
the blessings of this life. And therefore Christ says (Luke xii. 
29) to us all, even amid life’s wildest storms, Mr/ pstsoopiZeG. $£, 
“ Be not of doubtful mind ” — be not like ships which toss in 
the stormy offing, instead of clinging to the anchor sure and 
steadfast which keeps them safe in the harbour’s mouth. 

The sinlessness of Tesus has been our example — an “ under- 
writing ” v7toypap.fJ.ov over which the best of the saints have 
striven faintly to trace their lives. He has been to the world, 
as is said in the Epistle to Diognetus, “ a Nurturer, a Father, 
a Teacher, a Counsellor, a Physician, the mind, light, honour, 
strength, glory ” of all who have received and trusted in Him. 
The Cross was to the Jews a stumbling-block, and to the Greeks 
foolishness ; but “ the foolishness of God is wiser than men, 
and the weakness of God is stronger than men.” f The faith 

f 1 Cor. i. 25. 


* 1 Pet. ii. 21. 


420 


THE LIFE OF LIVES. 


of Christ came of God, and therefore men cannot overthrow 
it. J No small part of the deadly hatred which Christians in- 
curred was due to their hostility to the worst vices — the impu- 
rities and the cruelties — of Paganism. § They would have noth- 
ing to do with “ the madness of the circus, the lewdness of the 
theatre, the heartlessness of the arena, or the vanity of the 
xystus ” : || and because they would not be present at such 
spectacles, the heathen sneered and railed at them as “ pallid, . 
pitiful, stupid, wretched creatures ; ” * “*a lurking and light- 
shunning people, mute in public, and garrulous in corners ; ” 
“ unlearned, rude, unpolished, rustic, barbarous, madmen, non- 
descripts — of trivial and sordid speech.” f Yet unaided by any, 
opposed by all, Christianity conquered the world. “We are but 
of yesterday,” says Tertullian, “ yet we have filled all that be- 
longs to you, your cities, your islands, your fortresses, your free 
towns, your council chambers, your camps, tribes, decuries, the 
Palace, the very Senate; we leave to you your Temples only.” $ 
To Christianity alone belongs the full conception of aya,rf7t 
or brotherly love. In classical Greek the word in that sense 
does not exist, and “ Charity ” in the Christian sense has risen 
far above the narrow connotation of the Latin caritas. Humil- 
ity, again, is a word which owes all its loveliness to Christianity ; 
in Latin it is a term of contempt and means abjectness! The 
Greek word, raneirocppoavrrf, was regarded as a synonym of 
poor-spirited baseness. St. Peter, thinking how Christ girded 
himself with a towel, and washed the disciples’ feet, bids Chris- 
tians tie humble-mindedness round them with knots like a 
slave’s apron.* Humanitas meant in Latin “ human nature,” 
or “ refined culture ; ” in Christian language it means love to the 
whole brotherhood of man. Well may the author of the Epistle 
to Diognetus say, “ What the soul is to the body, that Christi- 
anity is to the world.” 

Here, perhaps, I may be allowed to repeat words which I 

* Acts v. 39. f Aug. De Civ , Dei. ii. 20. 

X Tert. Apol. 38. § Minuc. Fel. Oct. 8, 12. 

| Arnob. c. Genies i. 28, 29, ii. 5, 58, 59. Tert. Apol. 37. 

** 1 Pet. v. 5. 


THE FINAL ISSUES. 


421 


have used before, and to say that the effects of the work; of 
Christ are, even to the unbeliever, indisputable and historical. 
It expelled cruelty, it curbed passion, it branded suicide ; it pun- 
ished and suppressed an execrable, yet all but universal, infanti- 
cide ; it drove the naked . shamelessness of heathen impurities 
into a congenial darkness. There was hardly a class whose 
wrongs it did not remedy. It rescued the gladiator; it freed 
the slave; it protected the captive; it nursed the sick; it shel- 
tered the orphan ; it elevated the woman ; it shrouded as with a 
halo of sacred innocence the tender years of the child. In every 
region of life its ameliorating influence was felt. It changed 
pity from “ a vice of the* mind ” to a holy virtue. It elevated 
poverty from a curse into a beatitude. It ennobled labour from 
a vulgarity into a dignity and a duty. It sanctified marriage 
from little more than a burdensome convention to little less than 
a blessed sacrament. It revealed the angelic beauty of a purity 
of which men had despaired, and of a meekness at which they 
scoffed. It created the very conception of charity, and broad- 
ened the limits of its obligation from the “ slightly expanded 
egotism ” of the family to the broadest horizon of the race. It 
evolved the Idea of Humanity as a common brotherhood, and 
cleansed the life and elevated the soul of each individual man. 
Mankind lay among the pots, and it clad them as it were with 
wings of a dove which is covered with silver wings and 
her feathers like gold. Christianity inspired into its weakest 
children a splendid heroism. “ Call us sarmenticii and semaxii” 
exclaims Tertullian, “ names derived from the wood wherewith 
we are burned, and the stakes to which we are bound ; this is 
the garment of our victory, our embroidered robe, our triumphal 
chariot.” * “ The nearer I am to the sword,” said Ignafins, 

“ the nearer am I to God.” f “We were condemned to the 
wild beasts,” said St. Perpetua, “ and with hearts full of joy 
returned to our prison.” Whence came this rapture in the very 
face of doom ? It came from the constraining love of Christ. 

At last, finding that they had to do with a host of Scsevolas, 
“ floe proudest of earthly powers, arrayed in 'the plenitude of 
* Tert. Apol. .50. f Ignat. Ep . ad Smyrn. 


422 


THE LIFE OF LIVES. 


material resources, humbled herself before a power founded 
on a mere sense of the Unseen.” $ The Instans Tyrannus, 
striving in vain to crush or undermine his humble opponents, 
was forced to exclaim — 

“ When sudden — how think ye the end ? 

Did I say ‘ without friend ’ ? 

Say rather from marge to the blue marge 
The whole heaven grew his targe, 

With the sun’s self for visible boss, 

While an arm ran across 

Which the earth heaved beneath like a breast — 

When the wretch was safe pressed ! 

Do you see ? Just my vengence complete, 

The man sprang to his feet, 

Stood erect, caught at God’s skirt, and prayed : — 

So I was afraid ! ” 

And having subdued and won the Empire, Christianity, by 
its nobleness and sympathy, subdued and won the wild horde 
of Northern barbarism. Gibbon is a most unprejudiced wit- 
ness, and he says, “ The progress of Christianity has been 
marked by two glorious and decisive victories, over the learned 
and luxurious civilisation of the Roman Empire, and even the 
warlike barbarians of Scythia and Germany, who subverted 
the Empire and embraced the religion of the Romans.”* At-„ 
tila the Hun was overawed by Pope Leo III. at Ponte Molino, 
and Genseric the Vandal at the gates of Rome. Totila listened 
humbly to the rebukes and predictions of Benedict. The bishops 
of the Church won the title of Defensores Civitatis, and as Mr. 
J. S. Mill says, “ treated with the conquerors in the name of 
the natives. It was their adhesion which guaranteed the gen- 
eral obedience; and after the conversion of the conquerors it 
was to their sacred character that the conquered were indebted 
for whatever mitigation they experienced of the fury of con- 
quest.”* Thus did the Church preserve “ the real property of 
the past amid the trembling destinies of the future.” f Christian 

* Grammar of Assent, 472. ■}• Gibbon, iii. 258 (ed. Milman). 

X Dissertations, ii. 263. 

§ Ozanam, Hist, of Civilisation in the Fifth Century, i. 14 (comp. ii. 6). 


THE FINAL ISSUES. 


423 


missionaries converted and thereby civilised the world. Ulfila 
converted the Goths; St. Anskar the Scandinavians; St. Boni- 
face the Germans ; St. Patrick the Irish ; St. Columba the 
Northern Britons ; St. Aidan the Northumbrians ; St. Remigius 
the Franks; St. Augustine, of Canterbury,, the English. Two 
nations, England and Spain, owed their conversion to Gregory 
the Great. The heralds of the Cross went forth into every 
region conquering and to conquer. To prove how the tide of 
Christianity is ever advancing, it may suffice to say that if at 
the end of the third century the whole race of mankind had 
passed by in long procession, not more than one in one hundred 
and twenty would have been a Christian. Had they passed 
by fifty years ago, not more than one in five; but were they at 
this moment to pass one by one Before our eyes, it is probable 
that one in three would have heard the name and accepted the 
faith of Christ. The Faith of Mankind has not been dimmed 
but rather brightened by the long progress of the centuries; 
and while we sing 

“ Waft, waft, ye winds the story., 

And you ye waters .roll, 

Till like a Sea of glory 
'It spreads from pole to pole:: 

Till o’er our ransomed nature 
The Lamb for sinners slain, 

'Redeemer, King, Creator,” 

Returns in bliss foreign. 

we may feel an ever-deepening confidence that now the time 
is not far distant when He who was lifted on the Cross will 
draw all men unto Him. 

Perhaps the divinest gift of Christ to the Human Race has 
bene that it has enabled every one of them — by the imitation 
of His example ; by the gift of His grace ; by the Holy Spirit ; 
Who will make a temple of the mortal bodies of all who do not 
drive Him forth by self-chosen slavery to their own lowest 
desires and passions — to be true men, to be all that they may 
be and that God intended them to be. 

Yes— and even if we accept the old sad Greek proverb that 


« 4 2 4 


THE LIFE OF LIVES. 


“ most men are bad ” — let us not be blinded to the fact that 
Christ has immeasurably elevated the standard of human life in 
millions of individuals; that He has ameliorated the abjectness 
even of many who are bad; that he has bestowed on all alike 
the possibility of an infinitely blessed and ever-advancing - holi- 
ness, and even to the fallen has extended the grace which ex- 
tinguishes a fearful despair. The world is still infinitely far 
from perfect; but yet, to countless myriads more than in the 
Pagan world or the' ancient Dispensation, God has granted the 
fulfilment of the promise, “ Thou shalt tread upon the lion and 
the adder; the young lion and the dragon shalt thou trample 
under thy feet.” The Christian Dispensation is, in comparison 
with all others which dreceded it, “ as sunlight too moonlight,” 
and in spite of many causes for anxiety and discouragement, 
it still advances, and holds out to all human souls the means 
of ennoblement, the path of repentance, the hope full of immor- 
tality. 

“ Askest thou in exultation 

What the Cross of Christ has clone ? 

Ask the splendours of creation 
If they feel the noonday Sun ; 

Ask reviving vegetation, 

Rushing forth on joyous wing. 

If it feels the inspiration 

Of the breath-enchanting Spring.” 

Since Christ lived, and died, and rose again for us men and 
our salvation, no soul of man need lie in the dark depths of 
despair ; and all of the multitude without number who love and 
fear His name, in every clime, may say to one another with 
humble exultation, “ Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and 
it doth not yet appear what we shall be ; but we know that when 
He shall appear we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as 
Pic is.” 

“ Haste then, and wheel away a shattered world, 

Ye slow-revolving season ! We would see. 

A world which does not dread or hate Christ’s laws, 

Where Violence shall never lift the sword, 

Nor Cunning justify the proud man’s wrong, 

Leaving the poor no remedy but tears ! ” 


THE FINAL ISSUES. 425 

“ Terrena ccelestibus cedunt.” * What Christ has done is a 
pledge of what He will do ; and the fact that His name is now 
known and worshipped by at least one-third of all the Race of 
Man is a prophecy to us that ere long “ the glory of the Lord 
shall cover the earth as the waters cover the sea.” If there be 
not this hope for the human race, there is assuredly no other. 
And therefore we pray with^all our hearts, “ Oh, Lord, hasten 
Thy Kingdom! Put on Thy royal robes, oh, Prince of the 
Kings of all the world, for now Thy v Church calleth Thee, and 
all nations sigh to be redeemed.” 


* Tert. De Arat. 2. 


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